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EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 





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SevrRES PORCELAIN BONBONNIERE, DECORATED WITH PAINTINGS BY DODIN AFTER 
BOUCHER, WITH GOLD MOUNTS SUPPLIED BY THE KING’S JEWELLERS, 
FOsSIN ET FILS. 


Once the property of Mr. Alfred de Rothschild: 
From an illustration kindly lent by Sir Edward Marshall Hall. 


iS Si lta 
So rH pe 








THE AMATEUR 
COLLECTOR 


Everybody’s Book on Collecting 


BY 
DR. GEORGE C. WILLIAMSON 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW YORK 
ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY 
1924 








Printed in Great Brita. Wyman & Sons Lid. London, 


TO THE PLEASANT MEMORY OF 
ALFRED, 

FIRST VISCOUNT NORTHCLIFFE, 
WHO SUGGESTED THAT THESE 
CHAPTERS SHOULD BE WRITTEN, 
AND TO 
BERNARD FALK 
WITH GRATEFUL THANKS 








whe 





PREFACE 


OLLECTING is in the air. There are few 

{ : persons who do not collect something. 

There are, moreover, many persons who 

have various things in their houses, about which 

they are anxious to know something. Perchance 

they are books or prints, pieces of porcelain, old 

watches or clocks, diariesand deeds, portraits, letter- 
weights, newspapers, tokens or decanter labels. 

A long and varied experience in collecting and 
in viewing other people’s collections, has enabled 
me to gather up a certain amount of information 
which has proved of interest and importance to 
some collectors, and possessed of many of the 
necessary books of reference, I have been enabled 
to augment practical experience by allusions to 
the volumes written by other collectors and by 
notable experts, on various subjects. 

For many months I contributed to the pages 
of the Weekly Dispatch on the advice of Lord 
Northcliffe, a series of articles, embodying some 
of the information I possess. The articles appear 
to have been appreciated, if | may judge from the 
enormous correspondence that poured in upon me 
concerning them. A large proportion of the 
writers asked that the articles shouldappear inmore 

7 


8 PREFACE 


permanent form, hence the issue of this book, by the 
kind permission of the proprietors of the paper in 
which the majority of them originally appeared. 

Their issue in book form has enabled me to 
make certain corrections in them, to bring them 
more up to date, and to add slightly to their 
extent, including certain parts of them which had 
to be omitted, owing to the rigid limits of space 
afforded in the Press. | 

By intention, they did not deal with the more 
serious and important side of collecting, but 
rather to its lighter aspects. Pictures were, of 
necessity, omitted from their scope. To have 
included them would have meant increasing the 
_articles to an abnormal size. Whether papers 
on collecting pictures, miniatures, drawings, 
enamels, sculpture, and such kindred subjects 
may appear later on, is a question for further 
consideration, but there are far more collectors 
of the less valuable treasures, and those which 
may be termed bric-a-brac, than there are of the 
costly and more elaborate works of art. 

It has been thought desirable to mention in 
quite brief fashion such subjects as old silver, 
Sévres porcelain, Henri Deux faience, in order 
to give a general estimate of their importance, 
but these and many other subjects could well be 
amplified at considerable length. 

The chapters are, however, intended to skim 
over the surface of the subject, and to give general, 


PREFACE 9 


rather than special, information. Their original 
reception was extremely gratifying to me,andI hope 
that, in this altered form, they may prove of some 
service to persons who, like myself, are interested in 
collecting, and to those who are eager to know some- 
thing about the things they collect and possess. 

I have to thank Mr. Reginald Grundy, the 
Editor of The Connoisseur, for the considerate 
manner in which he has helped me with regard 
to the illustrations for this book. Most of them, 
with only one or two notable exceptions, have 
been placed by him at my disposal, and illustrate 
important and fine objects that have been referred 
to in the pages of his magazine. For the frontis- 
piece I am indebted to Sir Edward Marshall Hall, 
who owns the colour block most generously 
lent to me. The two facsimile letters are 
from the wonderful collection of Clifford. docu- 
ments in the possession of Lord Hothfield. The 
illustration of the two pieces of Sheffield plate 
is taken from the famous book on that subject 
written by Mr. H. M. Veitch, and my acknowledg- 
ments are due to him and to his publishers, 
Messrs. G. Bell & Sons, for their consideration. 
The remaining illustrations have all been placed 
in my hands by Mr. Grundy. 


GEORGE C. WILLIAMSON. 
Burgh House, Hampstead, 
March, 1923. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
I. COLLECTORS AND COLLECTING - - ney 

II. CHELSEA CHINA FIGURES - - - = ee 
III. OLD GLASSES - - - - - - 26 
IV. OLD PRINTS - - - - - ea | 

V. SEVRES PORCELAIN” - ~ - - - 36 

VI. OLD SILVER - - - - - «MY 
VII. STAINED AND PAINTED GLASS) - - o:- + 46 
VIII. RARE POSTAGE STAMPS - - =) ae 
IX. MEZZOTINTS ota FES - ade - 59 
X. POST-CARDS - - - - - - 66 
XI. THE RAREST FAIENCE INTHE WORLD - - 76 
XII. BAXTER PRINTS - - ~ - - - 85 
XIII. CURIOUS OLD WINE - - - - - Q4 
XIV. EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES nuke - - 102 
XV. DIAMONDS WITH A HISTORY ea 
XVI. PRINTS BY LE BLOND ~ pales Seen 
XVI OLD. WEDGWOOD . > ..~.. =). 05.0. 
XVII. DINANDERIE - - - - - eae 
XIX. AUTOGRAPHS - - - ~ - 140 
XX. BLUE AND WHITE PORCELAIN - - - 149 
XXI. OLD DEEDS - - = - - - 155 
XXII]. OLD ENGLISH IRONWORK - - -  - I6I 
XXIII. COLOUR PRINTS -~ - - - ~ - 172 
XXIV. TRADERS’ TOKENS - - - - 180 
XXV. LACE BOBBINS |= - © = =]. [hi 


XXVI. AMBER * - - me - a ~ 205 
Io 


CHAPTER 
XXVII. 
XXVIII. 
XXIX. 
XXX. 
XXXI. 
XXXII. 
XXXII. 
XXXIV. 
XXXV. 
XXXVI. 
XXXVII. 
-XXXVII. 
XXXIX. 
Rl: 
XLI. 
XLII. 
XLIII. 


CONTENTS 


PORTRAITS IN ENAMEL 
WATCHES - - 
DECANTER LABELS~ - 
STRAW MARQUETERIE - 
BELLS - - - 
BONBONNIERES - - 
LOWESTOFT WARE - 


LETTER-WEIGHTS AND DOOR-PORTERS 


LUSTRE WARE - = 
OAK CHESTS = < 
SEALS AND SEALING-WAX 
BEAUTIFUL FRUIT BASKETS 
OLD CLOCKS 2 at 
SHEFFIELD PLATE ~ 
OLD FURNITURE = 
CAKES AND ALE . 


BATTERSEA AND BILSTON ENAMELS 


<< 


Il 
PAGE 
202 
209 
216 
224 
230 
237 
242 
248 
254 
259 
265 
273 
278 
285 
293 
303 
SIT 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 
Sévres Porcelain Bonbonniére, decorated with paintings 
by Dodin after Boucher. With gold mounts 
supplied by the King’s jewellers, Fossin et Fils 


Frontispiece 
Pair of Old Chelsea China Figures - - - facing 24 
Stuart Period Engraved Wine Glasses - - facing 28 
Silver-gilt Standing Cup and Cover, 1606 - facing 42 
Curious and rare ees sagen of the Republic of 
San Marino - - - facing 54 
Mezzotint of Henrietta, Countess of Warwick, from 
Lord Cheylesmore’s Collection - - facing 60 
Pegasus Vase. Blue Jasper, with subject of Apollo and 
the Muses, modelled by Flaxman- - - facing 128 
Facsimile of a letter from Queen Elizabeth to George, 
Earl of Cumberland -~ - - facing 146 


Facsimile of a letter from Lady Anne Clifford when eight 
years old, to her father, George, Earl of Cumberland, 


concerning her birthday - - - facing 146 
A splendid Blue and White Canam Jar, decorated with 

the Prunus Blossom - - - facing 150 
Some interesting old French Watches - - facing 212 
Three pieces of Straw Work from Peterborough 

Museum - - - - - - facing 226 
A Glass Paper- weight, cout nane Flowers sprinkled 

with Dew - - facing 250 
Bristol Glass Millefiore Paper- weight dated 1848 facing 250 
Three Fine Old English Lustre Jugs - - - facing 256 
A good Old English Oak Chest - - - facing 262 
Sheffield Plate Basket on three feet, fitted with a Flint 

Glass Lining. Circa 1785 - - facing 288 
Sheffield Plate Basket, on Oval Foot, fitted with a Blue 

Glass Lining. Circa 1785 - - - facing 288 
Fine Italian Cabinet, and two William and Mary Chairs, 

at Hengrave Hall - facing 298 


A very fine example of Old Battersea Enamel ~ facing 314 


EVERYBODY’S BOOK 
ON COLLECTING 


CHAPTER I 


COLLECTORS AND COLLECTING 


The difficulty is to find something that 

no one else is collecting and to gather up 
a collection that will not only give pleasure 
and be an enterprise, but also will some day, if 
needs demand, fetch more than the modest sum 
already expended. 

Collecting can be not only a joy, a solace, a 
refreshment, but an investment. For example, 
Sir John Day bought the paintings of the Barbizon 
School, the works of such men as Diaz, Mauve 
and Maris, and his family reaped great advantage 
from his discretion. Look again at Mr. Yates 
Thompson who has bought manuscripts wisely 
and sold many of them for sums far greater than 
he gave for them ; or look at the many collectors 
of mezzotints and drawings whose care in buying 
has been amply repaid in the auction-rooms. 

13 


Fy the citi collects something nowadays. 


14 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Then again there is the delight of purchasing 
at last what you have been seeking for a long 
time, or of completing sets, as Mr. Morgan once 
did when he bought from a casual caller, out of a 
newspaper parcel, a Sévres vase which matched 
one he had possessed for years and for which he 
would gladly, to complete the pair, have paid at 
auction an enormous sum. 

I myself had an odd and curious happening of 
this kind. 

When a schoolboy I bought, for fourpence, an 
old volume of a rare county history, published 
in 1719, out of a box of old books at a stall. It 
was the third volume, rather well bound, and in 
clean condition. The work was published in five 
volumes. I had always desired to possess it, 
but could never find any other odd volumes. 
Five-and-twenty years afterwards my father, who, 
like myself, had long desired a copy of this par- 
ticular book, marched in with great triumph, 
having purchased in Reading for a large sum, 
a complete set of the same book, in beautiful 
order.. He and I looked it over, and I drew his 
attention to the fact that the third volume was 
bound just a little differently to the others, the 
variation being slight, but quite clear when it was 
recognised. We went through the set of five 
books, page by page, and at the end of the last 
found a note by the owner, whose name was 
inscribed in each, to the effect that he had lent 


COLLECTORS AND COLLECTING 15 


the third volume soon after the publication of 
the book, that is to say probably in about 1750, 
to a friend, and had never been able to regain it. 
In consequence, he had purchased an odd third 
volume, and had it bound closely as possible to 
the other four. I at once thought of my own 
third volume and declared I believed I had the 
missing one. My father laughed the idea to 
scorn, saying that the chances were a million to 
one that the books could have ever come together, 
or that the son should buy the odd volume in 
London, and the father the remaining four in 
Reading, but on sending home for the volume, 
my suggestion was found to be the correct one ; 
mine was the missing volume which had been 
separated from its fellows for over a hundred and 
fifty years, and which also had its owner’s signa- 
ture in it. The result is, that this interesting 
set of books, which still remains in the family 
(although not, I regret, in my own possession) 
has two Volumes III, and the whole story in- 
scribed inside one of them. This is one of the 
thrills of collecting, and every collector will 
understand the delight that such a circumstance 
brings out. 

Changes in value offer another series of 
romances. We have recently witnessed some 
extraordinary ones at the Britwell sale. There 
was a man called Narcissus Luttrell, who died 
in 1732, a collector and a bibliographer, who 


16 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


bought many books and_ broadsides, forming 
altogether, in Chelsea, an extraordinary collec- 
tion. He had a habit of marking inside the books 
the price he had given for them, and for a copy of 
George Chapman’s “‘ Shadow of Night ”’ he paid 
Threepence (3d.), and put the price on the title 
page. On February 6th of this year that book 
sold for {270—rather a substantial increase on 
the original price! On the third day’s sale of 
the Britwell library, another of Luttrell’s books 
came up, Gale’s “‘ Pyramus and Thisbe,” in 
which he had marked the price he had given for 
it as Twopence (2d.), and this book fetched £617. 
If, however, this is going too far back in changes 
in value, take another great collector, Richard 
Heber, who died as recently as 1833, and many 
of whose books appeared in the Britwell Library. 
At his sale, which took place at Sotheby’s in 
1834-5 and 6, a copy of Henry Petowes’ “ Faire 
Lady of Britaine ’’ sold for £4 19s. ; at the Britwell 
sale it realised £300. Another of his books by 
Dekker, called ‘‘ Warres, Warres, Warres,”’ sold 
for {6 2s. 6d. Dr. Rosenbach gave 250 guineas 
for it the other day. 

Two more instances may be given in the Chal- 
mers sale: only eighty years ago a book of 
Willoughby’s sold for 10 guineas, this year it 
fetched £1,950, and a Heber book which sold, in 
1834, for £5 1os., now sold for £960. 

A still further instance of romance in the 


COLLECTORS AND COLLECTING 1 


way of book collecting, is provided by a tiny 
volume, only measuring five inches by three and 
a half, found in an attic at Sir Charles Isham’s 
house at Lamport, about 1890. The book con- 
tained four little pamphlets and fetched £3,600. 
These are, of course, the exceptional romances in 
book buying, but there are others that are quite 
as interesting, both in that section of collecting 
and in others. The most curious occurrence in the 
Britwell sale was provided by the Marlowe book of 
“Hero and Leander,’’ which Sotheby’s did not 
even illustrate and made no fuss about. It 
turned out to be the only copy in existence. 
In 1836 it fetched £4 6s.—to-day {1,810. Dr. 
Rosenbach found out this fact and of course 
bought the book. 

It has been my fortunate experience to come 

into contact with many of the great collectors 
of the day. For Mr. Pierpont Morgan, who was 
an old and personal friend, | was able to com- 
pile several of his catalogues and to travel all 
over Europe in search of material which he 
desired for these volumes, and in regard to his 
treasures I have heard from him many interesting 
stories. 
- He it was who bought from Mr. Salting that 
amazing Red Hawthorn vase that was the glory 
of his collection. Salting had bought it, I believe, 
for £400. He sold it for £900, and after Mr. 
Morgan’s death Duveens gave a huge price for 

B 


18 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


it. He also it was who bought for a small sum 
a miniature of a woman and child that I opened 
and found inside a bit of the handwriting of 
Napoleon III, saying that it was a picture of his 
mother and himself when he was a baby. 

He showed me once an old dilapidated, rare 
book. He had sent it to be carefully repaired 
and inside the binding two unique broadsides had 
been found worth five times what he had given 
for the volume ! 

Mr. George Salting, the benefactor of the South 
Kensington Museum, was also a friend with whom 
I came into contact very frequently and who 
dined with me, and I believe I was the person who 
induced him to commence to buy miniatures. 

How curious were his rooms in St. James’s 
Street : every chair covered with precious things, 
while he even had to lie on half his bed because on 
the other half were some rock crystal vases for 
which he could find no other place, and he told me 
he lay very quiet for fear of shaking them off the 
bed. 

Salting had strange fits of strict economy. He 
returned once from Paris one day before a great 
sale was over for fear of losing the value of his 
return ticket. When he sold his famous Red 
Hawthorn vase he was afraid that he might 
suddenly lose his huge fortune and die a pauper. 
He often walked in heavy rain to a dinner party, 
as he “‘ really could not afford a taxicab,” he said, 


COLLECTORS AND COLLECTING 19 


I have met many of the great American collec- 
tors, and have visited their houses, especially 
Mr. Widener, Mr. Gould, Mr. Frick, Mr. Pratt, 
and others of the benefactors of the great museums 
of America, and I believe that Mr. Widener would 
never have bought Rembrandt’s “ Mill’’ but for my 
telling him one day when I was in his gallery that 
there were a certain few pictures in England which » 
no money would buy, and a number of great 
collectors who would never be persuaded to part 
with their treasures. He asked me to name one 
or two and, rather unwisely, I put Rembrandt’s 
“Mill” first, saying that I believed nothing 
would induce Lord Lansdowne to part with it. 
The old man replied to me, with a chuckle, and 
said, ‘‘ We shall see’”’; and it was not a very 
long time after that I had a letter from him, in 
the course of which he said, ““ Do you remember 
talking to me about Rembrandt’s ‘ Mill’? It is 
_ now hanging in this gallery.” 

I have met Mr. Huntington, who had just 
bought “‘ The Blue Boy,” and is building a palace 
in California for his books. He will have the 
greatest private collection in the world, and all 
students will be welcome to go and see them if 
they care to take the long journey to Los Angeles. 

Mrs. Colis P. Huntington, whom he married, 
I have often seen, and admired her glorious 
furniture and the superb Lawrence portrait group 
she possesses, and her wonderful Polish rugs. 


20 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


She gave her son, Archer Huntington, as a New 
Year gift, a great Velazquez portrait, the finest 
in America, and paid very many thousands for 
it. I have seen it hanging in his gallery in New 
York, at the Hispanic Society’s rooms. 

Mr. Henry Clay Frick so loved his pictures that, 
when he left New York for Eagle Rock, the best 
of the pictures went with him in a steel covered 
motor van, into which they slid on steel rollers 
into velvet-covered partitions, and his great 
works by Hals and Rembrandt, Hobbema, Vermeer, 
Reynolds, Romney, Titian and Turner were all 
rehung at Prides Crossing, where I saw them 
with delight and admired the glorious taste and 
superb means that had enabled him to acquire 
them. He was Morgan’s great antagonist, and 
all his pictures now belong to the City of New 
York. 

_Mr. Gladstone, in the very midst of his great 
political efforts, gave considerable attention to 
the study of pottery made at Leeds, and I remem- 
ber having a long conversation about it with him, 
in which he amazed me by the knowledge he had 
brought together, and which almost seemed as 
though information about the Leeds pottery had 
been the sole object of his life and that nothing 
else had ever interfered with it. He recognised 
in a flash a genuine piece of Leeds pottery, differ- 
entiating it from some Wedgwood ware which 
very much resembled it. He told me of a very 


COLLECTORS AND COLLECTING _ ar 


rare catalogue of Leeds ware which, at that 
moment, was for sale, and on his advice I bought 
it, at a price which was fifty times less than its 
present value; and he said that the joy of being 
able to pass from the turmoil of politics and the 
anxieties of Parliament to a quiet contemplation 
of the cream-coloured ware which he so loved, was 
a source of great solace and rest to him, and in 
searching some of the antique shops for a new 
example of Leeds pottery he was able to refresh, 
in fact, to re-create his mind, and then come back 
with a renewed zest to what was, after all, the 
main purpose of his life. In this he spoke no 
more than the bare truth. Every collector will 
agree that the joy of being able to throw off 
worries and think about the objects with which 
he tries to fill his house (often to the grave concern 
of his wife), is one of the best joys of life, and if, 
with that, he can add the delight of picking up 
a bargain, such as a Whistler catalogue that 
I once bought for a penny and is now worth very 
many pounds, the joy is one sure to be the greater. 


CHAPTER II 


CHELSEA CHINA FIGURES 


N the London Museum, amongst other 
treasures, there is a wonderful Chelsea 
group, that was once on a little round 

table, under a glass case, in the front window of 
a Brighton lodging-house. A dealer passing by 
caught sight of it, went in, and took the rooms 
at once for a week; and after he had been there 
a few days, by the help of a substantial sum of 
money, and some clever cajolery, the Chelsea 
group changed hands. He then had occasion to 
be called to London, gave up the rooms, and 
quickly sold the group for a very large sum of 
money. It passed through different collectors’ 
hands, and is now at rest in the Museum. 

When I was a boy I saw on the mantelpiece 
in the sitting-room of an old farm-house, two 
tiny white jugs, representing goats and a bee. 
They belonged to the farmer’s wife, they had a 
triangular mark at the bottom, and were dated 
1745. They were very rare, because they repre- 
sented some of the earliest products of the Chelsea 
factory. The farmer’s wife knew they were 


important, and would not sell them. She died 
22 


CHELSEA CHINA FIGURES 23 


suddenly, one of the jugs was broken all to pieces, 
the other was used as a milk-jug by someone who 
knew nothing of its value, and that also perished! 
There are very few still remaining of these goat 
jugs. Some have the word “ Chelsea’’ and the 
date at the back of them, and the triangular 
mark. They are said to have been copied from 
an old English silver jug, which is, I believe, now 
in the Brighton Museum, but whether that jug 
is quite genuine is a matter of some doubt. They 
were the earliest dated pieces, but probably the 
factory began fifteen years or so earlier still. 

The plain white specimens, without any colour, 
and with the triangle mark, are the most precious 
of the Chelsea productions, and every collector 
aims at obtaining them. One of the most beauti- 
ful examples that I know of is in the possession 
of a doctor in Harley Street, who has a very 
choice collection of Chelsea figures and groups. 

There are really four periods in Chelsea: the 
first I have mentioned, the second is distinguished 
by the introduction of the anchor mark, the third 
is when Sprimont became manager of the works, 
and the fourth is when the glaze became harder 
and stronger, and the whole details of the figures 
more accurate. Sometimes Bow figures are con- 
fused with Chelsea. The two works were in 
existence about the same time, and they were 
both in their turn bought up by Duesbury, and 
then, by reason of the transfer to Derby, Chelsea 


24 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


figures became known as Chelsea-Derby figures. 
If one compares the two sets of groups, one sees 
that fine Bow figures have been subjected to the 
use of a tool, that there are sharp edges where the 
tool has cut the paste away, especially in under- 
cutting, whereas Chelsea was turned out from the 
moulds so accurately that it seldom needed the 
use of a tool. The quality of Bow is bluer than 
that of fine Chelsea, which is a cold, splendid 
white. The collector must look for the three or 
four seggar marks, the little dark spots where 
the figure rested on a piece of coarse porcelain 
while it was being baked in the kiln, and occasion- 
ally a tiny drop of the glaze will be found behind 
the group, where it has not quite fallen off, and 
this, by the way, never happens in the modern 
reproductions. There are few things more glorious 
in the way of porcelain than Chelsea figures or 
groups. Look at the wonderful set of Muses in 
the London Museum. Look at the two superb 
groups lent by Mrs. Salting, the hurdy-gurdy 
player and the monkey, and the flute players, 
with a background of what collectors call bocage. 
Look. also at the two groups representing foxes, 
and at the one depicting the four corners of the 
globe and a pyramid, and examine also some of 
the lovely figures and groups in the new porcelain 
gallery in the British Museum, in order to acquire 
a knowledge of what is the best. Note how 
splendid and brilliant was the gold on the old 


“SHANOIY VNIHZ) VaSTSHD GTO dO UIVg 











CHELSEA CHINA FIGURES 25 


groups. By the way, I am told that Mr. Salting, 
or the dealer who sold to him, waited seven years 
before he was able to acquire the companion 
group to one already possessed, and then, quite 
unexpectedly, it turned up at Christie’s, and had 
been all the while in a little country house in 
the recesses of Cornwall. 

Candlesticks are amongst the most precious 
things in Chelsea, but one must see that the candle- 
piece is removable, or is pierced; the modern copyist 
forgets that when the candlesticks were made, 
candles were precious, and were burned down to 
the last inch, and then the top was taken out 
or the piece of candle poked away fromit. Several 
of the modern copies would not even hold candles 
at all, they are too small. 

Perhaps the rarest of all things in Chelsea are 
the bouquets of flowers; there are two beauties 
in the London Museum, given by that great 
benefactor Mr. Joicey, whose death occurred in 
1919. Many of the finest pieces of Chelsea were 
designed by the sculptor Roubillac, notably the 
groups of two lovers. 

The collector will do well to invest in Sir Arthur 
Church’s catalogue of porcelain, in the Schreiber 
catalogue, and in books by Hobson and Bemrose 
and King. From them he will then learn all he 
desires to know when he starts collecting at 
fascinating little figures. 


CHAPTER III 


OLD GLASSES 


N the autumn of 1907 there was a house- 
party at Oxburgh Hall, the seat of Sir 
Henry Bedingfeld, and the writer whom 

we all knew as ‘“‘ Marmaduke’ was amongst 
the party. He told me that one afternoon, 
searching for some long-lost vases, he discovered 
a quantity of curious-looking glass in one of the 
pantries, which had not been moved for a 
generation. All the party, in search of amuse- 
ment, went down to have a look at it, and the 
result of the visit was to find eleven pieces of 
Jacobite glass, three of great rarity, one unique. 
The glasses were exhibited at the Victoria and 
Albert Museum, and since then fetched a price 
running into many hundreds of pounds. 

In 1912 some things in an old manor house at 
Derby were to be sold. There was nothing of 
very special importance, as all the choice things 
had been removed, but in the kitchen was a box 
of old glasses, which a dealer agreed to take 
without counting them, at a shilling apiece. One 
was a splendid Jacobite glass, and later on it sold 


at Sotheby’s for a hundred and eighty guineas. 
: 26 


OLD GLASSES 29 


In a small china-cupboard at Woking was 
discovered, in 1920, a Jacobite glass, for which 
the owner in ordinary times would gladly have 
taken a sovereign. It fetched two hundred at 
Sotheby's, and another one, very similar to it, 
a hundred and seventy-five. 

A Mr. Cater, of Colchester, formed a collection 
of old glass. He said he only gave a few shillings 
apiece for what he had, but the little collection 
sold for fifteen hundred ; and a still more remark- 
able thing was the sale of the Martin Gibbs 

collection in 1919, for Mr. Gibbs stated he had never 
_ paid more than half-a-crown a piece for a single 
specimen, and a wonderful pair of glasses fetched 
thirty-five pounds, another pair thirty-four pounds, 
a single glass fifty-two pounds, and the whole 
seventy-one lots nearly eight hundred pounds. For 
one of Mr.Hartshorne’s greatest treasures in the way 
of Jacobite relics he gave a shilling at St. Leonards, 
in 1g0r. It is therefore worth while collecting 
old glass, but it is not particularly easy to do it 
just now, because so many people have taken up 
with this fascinating amusement and prices rule 
high, but let the collector be advised to go about 
the country into small shops and smaller houses, 
and not just at the moment frequent the auction 
rooms, if bargains are desired. Moreover, my 
advice would be to try to stick to one special 
section of glass. If it is wine glasses, Jacobite 
ones are what are particularly desired, or the 


28 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


beautiful ones with twists in their stems. Another 
man may collect liqueur glasses, or rummers, 
tumblers, ale glasses, coaching glasses that have 
no foot, or the little dumpy glasses that are so 
frequently to be found in eighteenth-century glass, 
and many another will go in for Irish, especially 
for Waterford glass. 

Here a word of warning. Do not imagine that 
Waterford glass is distinguished by a pale blue 
tinge. There is some Waterford glass with that 
tinge, owing perhaps to an excess of lead, or even, 
possibly, to an accident in the pot. Do not 
fancy that all Cork glass has a pale yellowish 
tinge—that also may result from an accident. 
A great deal of the finest Waterford glass is clear 
white, but as a rule it has a ring that is almost 
unmistakable to a collector, and moreover, a 
brilliancy which is remarkable. The blue-tinged 
Waterford glass often has a curious bloom upon 
it, which can be wiped off, but which recurs, and 
it has a strange and unmistakable feel about 
it, quite different from modern glass, but quite 
impossible to convey in words. Many persons 
jump to the conclusion that because a piece has 
that beautiful blue tinge, it is an exceptional 
treasure. That may be so. Probably most of 
the blue-tinged glass was Waterford, or at least 
Irish, but by far the best Irish glass was not blue 
at all, and moreover, it is exceedingly difficult 
to determine what is Irish and what is English 





ILASSES, 


c 


RIOD ENGRAVED WINE 


5 
wv) 


STUART PI 





OLD GLASSES 29 


glass, and probably most critics, including Mr. 
Dudley Westropp, who certainly wrote the 
greatest book on the subject, will say that it 
is impossible to be quite certain except in a very 
few instances about many pieces. Waterford blue 
happens to be the rage, and it is certainly delight- 
ful in colour, but it is only a passing fancy, and 
Irish or English white glass is really more 
wonderful. 

Many Irish lustres are of far greater beauty 
than any bit of Waterford blue can be, and 
decanters, bottles, and sweetmeat cups, jugs, 
dishes, bowls, posset cups, flower-vases, and even 
christening bowls and chalices that were made in 
Ireland have got tue Irish characteristic of being 
heavy, of ringing with a wonderful sound, of 
having a special depth of tone, but very often 
have not a trace of the blue tinge or the yellowish 
tinge that less knowledgeable collectors are apt 
to think must distinguish Waterford or Cork 
glass. 

Furthermore, some of the glass in Irish houses and 
Irish collections may not have been a home product, 
as the factories in Ireland were few and small, 
and did not begin till about 1780, and English 
glass was imported into Ireland in considerable 
quantities. A few of the pieces of authentic 
Waterford glass are absolutely pure white. 

The joy of a collection of glass is that it can 
be used, and nothing sets off a dinner-table so 


30 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


splendidly ; and again, that one’s sense of colour 
can be appealed to, as the beautiful_purple, red 
and green glasses are very decorative. Look 
always for the pontil mark on the bottom ; notice 
the turned-over flap on the foot; see that the 
spirals never run from right to left, and are 
always a little irregular; watch for lumps and 
irregularities in the make; look out for the 
brilliant clear colour; and, above all, take an 
expert’s advice in the case of anything particularly 
precious, for glass is being forged in all directions, 
and hundreds of the items that are offered in 
the antique shops are absolutely modern, and 
are not worth looking at for a single minute. 

I advise collectors to refer to Mr. Dudley 
Westropp’s standard book and the volume by 
Mrs. Stannas on “‘ Old Irish Glass,’’ Bates’s “‘ Old 
English Glass,’’ Wilmer’s ‘‘ Early English Glass,” 
to Yoxall’s “Collecting Old Glass,’’ and to 
Coenen’s account of the Willet-Holthuysen 
Museum in Amsterdam, where some remarkably 
beautiful examples of wine glasses may be seen 
and admired. 


CHAPTER IV 


OLD PRINTS 


MORE popular branch of collecting than 
A that comprised under the title of old 
prints, it would be difficult to find, and 
yet, amongst amateur collectors, there is often 
some misapprehension as to the different classes 
of prints. There are probably few branches of 
collecting in which there is greater opportunity 
for bargains. } 
I was shown by one of the London dealers some 
years ago a splendid impression of Rembrandt's 
etching, ‘“‘ The Three Trees.’’ He did not know 
that I had seen it some months before, fastened 
into a child’s scrap-book, which had belonged to 
the grandfather of the man who sold it. Its 
margin, unfortunately, had been injured, and in 
a valuable print, by the way, almost as much 
depends on the margin as on the print, but it 
was a splendid object, and but for the interposition 
of a collector, would have been torn up in a 
nursery. | 
A fine series of Piranesi’s “‘ Dungeons”’ was 
found in a country sale, fastened on to a large 
six-fold planish covered screen. Both sides of 
31 


32 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


the screen were so decorated. It was not easy 
to steam the prints off, but they were got off, 
and the new owner had a wonderful series. Quite 
recently, in an auction-room, a framed print was 
bought, which formed one of a series of six. The 
owner, when he got it home, discovered to his 
great delight that at the back of the print were 
the remaining five out of the six, and that it had 
been the previous owner’s habit to exhibit, in 
the same frame, first one of the prints, and then 
another. The six had been sold at far less than 
the full value of one. 

The oddest circumstance, however, connected 
with prints, that I ever heard of was with regard 
to a series called ‘‘ The Procession.’’ One only 
was sold in the auction sale, but the purchaser 
found that the back of the frame opened with 
two buttons, and so, wondering whether the 
owner had possessed the other prints, he waited 
till the close of the sale, and from a lumber-room 
bought various bundles of stuff and one odd 
rectangular frame. In the bundles he found all 
the remaining prints of ‘‘ The Procession,” in- 
cluding the one which is of a different size, and 
that exactly fitted the empty frame, which he 
had bought. for a shilling. | | 

Prints fall naturally into four groups: there 
are wood engravings, line engravings, mezzotints 
and etchings—and in with the etchings one may 
include stipple prints, which are not etchings, but 


OLD PRINTS 33 


which partake a little of their character. The 
wood engravings are of course the oldest. 
Whether the two prints dated 1418 and 1423 (of 
which one is in the Rylands collection’ and the 
other in London) are the progenitors of the entire 
series, cannot be stated quite definitely, because 
some critics believe that in one or both of these 
two woodcuts the figures have been tampered 
with. They were both, by the way, I believe, 
discovered inside old bindings. 

Wood engraving, however, certainly com- 
menced in the fifteenth century, and two of its 
greatest exponents were Diirer in the old days, 
and Bewick in more modern times. It would not 
be easy to collect Diirer’s prints, they are precious 
and very well known. Bewick’s are more likely 
to be met with, but a great joy is to collect English 
illustrations from 1857 down to 1870, or the 
delightful magazines and books, such as “ Once 
a Week,” “ Good Words,”’ “‘ The Poems of Tenny- 
son,’ and so on, in which the real woodcuts of 
that amazing period called ‘‘The Sixties ”’ 
appeared. To find the drawings for these is 
difficult, because in making the woodcut, the 
drawing was generally cut away, but the proofs 
are sometimes to be got, and are well worth 
securing. Woodcut engraving is a thing of the 
past to a great extent: process has driven it 
out. Box trees, on such places as Box Hill, near 
Dorking, are no longer carefully protected for 

Cc 


34 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


the sake of the fine wood which was the best of 
all‘on which to engrave, and probably, except in 
rare instances, wood engravings will never come 
back. : 

Line engraving, whether on copper or steel, 
commenced with the Florentine engravers who, 
after ornamenting gold work, used to fill up the 
hollows with the black enamel to render the 
design more clear. The goldsmith did not want 
to put the hard enamel in until he was certain 
the effect would be all right, and therefore he 
took a sulphur cast of his engraving which was 
called a niello, and filled up the lines in the sulphur 
with lamp-black, so that he could see how the 
work was going on. Then he found by using damp 
paper and pressing on the plate, he could make 
a sort of print, which helped him even more 
considerably, and so began plate printing from an 
engraving. It is the reverse of wood work: the 
wood engraver cuts away round the line, the 
plate printer cuts the line, and the very word. 
“to engrave ’’ comes from an old German word 
meaning “to dig.’ Let us take Schongauer, 
Diirer and Vosterman as representatives of the 
old line engravers. Doo and Sherborn as repre- 
senting the modern school. | 

In etching the work is done with an acid instead 
of with a tool, and there are various methods of 
coating the plate with the ground, as it is called, 
before the artist begins to draw upon it what is 


OLD PRINTS 35 


to be the etching. He can do it with a dabber, 
he can do it with a roller and smoke his plate, 
he can put the material on in solution, but in each 
case he proceeds afterwards to remove part of 
the surface and then uses the acid as the engraver 
has used the burin to cut into the plate. He can 
work ‘“‘in line,’ he can work “ in line and shade,”’ 
he can work in “‘ shade and texture,’ and these 
are the three principal methods of etching. 
Rembrandt is, perhaps, the greatest exponent 
of the art. Meryon, the poor lunatic Frenchman, 
who had first of all to give away his prints and 
then to sell for a few coppers, prints which now 
realise hundreds of pounds, is an almost equally 
great exponent of this wonderful art, and Whistler's 
most triumphant and most permanent work was 
done in etching. The works of these men are 
very difficult to obtain at moderate prices, but 
are worth striving for, and if the collector has 
any idea of making a collection of etchings, there 
are works by many other artists worth securing. 


d) 


CHAPTER V 


SEVRES PORCELAIN 


Pr: | HE collector should always aim at the best. 
He may not secure what he wants at 
first, but perhaps he will in time; there 

is nothing like aiming high. In consequence, 

every collector of porcelain should try to obtain 
an example of Sévres. 

Ruling out the so-called Henri II ware, of which 
there are said to be only sixty-five pieces in 
existence, Sévres is the next important. The 
factory made no attempt to cater for the ordinary 
person, the Sévres factory was a royal preserve, 
and kings and queens used Sévres porcelain, when 
they wanted to make presents to rival sovereigns, 
or to great people. 

Almost all Sévres is marked with a double “ L,”’ 
and inside appear the letter which gives the year. 
The collector is sure to be offered what is called 
“biscuit de Sévres,’’ especially white biscuit 
figures, and the double “‘ L’’ may be pointed out 
upon these figures, as a mark of their genuine 
character. It may generally be said that it is 
the very opposite, as practically no _ biscuit 
figures ever bore the double “ L”’ at all. 

36 


SEVRES PORCELAIN 37 


Then he must be careful that he does not buy 
what is called “‘ Baldock Sévres.”’ There was a 
Mr. Baldock, rather less than a hundred years ago, 
the big dealer of his day. He bought large 
quantities of white Sévres, either without decora- 
tion at all, or with very little, and he took off all 
the original decoration with powerful acids, and 
then employed an artist to repaint the Sévres 
porcelain in the glorious greens, blues and pinks 
which were in use at the factory. He did it very 
well, and even clever collectors have been taken in 
by his copies, because the original ware was 
genuine Sévres—but real Sévres must be not only 
made, but decorated, at the factory. 

Then, again, beware of the artists’ signs, 
because the great artists of Sévres painted their 
initials on their ware, and the date is known when 
each of them started work. I once saw a piece 
of Sévres, that was to be offered to Mr. Morgan. 
It bore the date letter of 1759, but the initial 
letter of an artist who did not start work at 
Sévres till 1763, and I was able to tell the person 
who was going to offer it that he had better get rid 
of it at once, as it was a forgery. Then I was 
shown a piece, marked with the double letters 
“HH,” signifying 1785, and decorated by a 
painter who died in the seventeen-seventies—and 
that, I am rather afraid, entered into a small local 
museum, and is there still. 

My first acquaintance with Sévres porcelain 


38 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


arose in a somewhat romantic way. In 1856, the 
eldest son of an English earl died quite unex- 
pectedly, leaving only daughters, and the title in 
consequence would have to pass to a great-nephew, 
whose mother the existing earl very strenuously 
disliked. At the moment of the death of the 
eldest son, the old earl was building a great dower- 
house, with a long gallery, in which to exhibit 
the famous pictures and vases he had bought. 
When his son died, he sent word that the work 
was to be stopped, not a ladder was to be moved, 
not a hod of mortar disturbed, not a brick nor a 
piece of wood touched, but every man was to leave 
his work at once. 

Moreover, he said that the family house was to 
be closed up, and the blinds drawn down, and he 
never resided there again, and he lived on and on 
till 1870, so that, when I first went into it, the 
blinds were glued to the window by the dead 
flies, and the curtains fell to pieces when you 
touched them. 

I also rambled all over the great unfinished house, 
to the imminent danger of my neck. The whole 
thing had steadily rotted away, but there was a 
small lodge, where the eldest son and his children 
had sometimes lived, and in that were stored 
pictures and treasures of enormous value. 

The pictures were too big to be hung on its 
walls, and stood round on the floor, the vases of 
Sévres and the bronzes crowded the mantel- 


SEVRES PORCELAIN 39 


pieces, and nothing was moved until the old 
nobleman died in 1870. 

A faithful housekeeper was put in charge, the 
house was watched night and day, there were 
fierce dogs on the premises, no one save one or 
two specially favoured persons, of whom I was one, 
was allowed to enter, nothing was allowed to be 
moved. 

The lady’s work-basket and her needJework 
perished on the table on which she had left it. 
There were marks of all the objects on the floors 
and shelves. Everything was kept dusted but 
nothing was moved. All the blinds were drawn, 
and the beautiful blue curtains shrouded the 
windows, and gradually fell to pieces. 

The lodge was kept in spotless order, and 
no one knew, save the old housekeeper and her 
two faithful servants, what amazing treasures there 
were in that tiny house. 

There were great silver vases ; there were large 
pieces of sculpture; there were splendid vases 
of Sévres of the very finest period; there was 
wonderful furniture; everything of high impor- 
tance, and the old man made a will to prevent 
any of the things ever going at any time to the 
man who would succeed him in the title. 

He tied them up to his granddaughters, but 
even they were not allowed to use or sell them, 
and then the reversion went on to a great charity, 
but after he died in 1870, the Settled Estates Act 


40 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


permitted of some change being made, and in 
1891, I had the privilege of looking with great care 
at all the things, and then it was that I acquired 
some knowledge of Sévres porcelain. 

Later on, I watched the things sell at Christie’s, 
and I delighted in the fact that the old man’s 
offensive will was able to be partially set aside, 
and that the new earl regained many of the 
splendid things of = his great-uncle had tried 
to deprive him. 

If only those pictures and that Sévres could 
have come into the market now, how different 
would have been their values! They fetched 
good prices then, about £1,500, but nothing to 
what they would have fetched now. 

There were Sévres vases eighteen inches high. 
There was a blue vase twenty inches high, and 
another wonderful one a little less. There were 
glorious Gros-bleu coffee-cups, and two superb 
Gros-bleu vases. . The coffee-cups fetched about 
fifty pounds for the four. 

I saw them later on in America, and I believe 
the owner gave six hundred pounds for them, and 
one pink vase, which then only sold for three or 
four pounds, afterwards fetched nearly three 
hundred. Sévres china is worth collecting. 


CHAPTER VI 


OLD SILVER 


HE collector of old silver has the advan- 

tage over his rivals of being more likely 

to render his collection of pecuniary 

advantage to him, but he must be possessed of 

important information, must be careful in his 

purchases, and ought to have a safe in which 
to deposit his treasures of silver-ware. 

There are bargains to be obtained, even in the 
precious metals. Breakfasting some years ago 
with a friend, I remarked on the beauty of his 
egg-spoons. “Sixpence each,” he told me, and 
my reply was that surely they were silver. 
“ Quite so, but that was all I gave for them at a 
country sale. They are French of the eighteenth 
century, and I happened to be familiar with 
Rosenberg’s work and in consequence recognised 
as silver what the auctioneer declared was only 
electro-plate.”” 

A man whom I knew quite well purchased some 
years ago, at an auction sale, an enormous venison 
dish and cover, large enough to hold a haunch. 
No one dreamed that it could possibly be silver, 
it was so huge, but he had seen the rare Exeter 

41 


42 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Hall mark, and carried it off for a five-pound note, 
making a magnificent profit, even at melting 
price, upon his curious purchase. 

Perhaps spoons are the best things to which a 
collector can devote his attention. The celebrated 
Staniforth set of spoons, dated 1519, only fetched 
sixty-two guineas in 1855, and is practically 
unrivalled. It was sold some few years ago for a 
very considerable sum—very many hundreds. 

The earliest known dated piece of English silver 
is aspoon dated 1445. The earliest piece with the 
London Hall mark is 1488, a spoon that was in the 
Staniforth collection. This is not to say that 
there is no English silver earlier than this, for 
there are two amazing pieces, belonging to the 
latter half of the fourteenth century, which 
belonged to the late Lord Carysfort, and were 
picked up in Whittlesea Mere. They are a censer 
and incense boat, and they and the William of 
Wykeham crozier are perhaps the finest examples 
of very early silver work—although, of course, 
earlier than that, comes the Saxon work of the 
City sceptre, surrounding its crystal shaft, which 
is much older still. | | 

Then, of course, there is the interesting series 
of bowls, called mazers, the spotted wood of which 
they are made taking its name from the same 
source as that from which we get the word 
‘““measles.”” These date from the thirteenth 
century, are executed in fine silver, and very 





SILVER GILT STANDING Cup AND COVER, 1606. 
Belonging to the Corporation of Portsmouth. 





1 
} 


OLD SILVER | 43 


occasionally come into the market. They were 
the bowls and cups of the time. | 

The collector can hardly hope to come upon an 
Elizabethan service, such as that which was made 
from the loot of the Armada, and hidden away for 
a couple of generations, and then sold at Christie’s 
for eleven thousand five hundred guineas, but 
he may come across some small pieces of great 
value, because the price of fine old silver is steadily 
going up in importance. 

He must, however, be acquainted with the fact 
that there are hall-marks to be looked for, and he 
must know something of the special marks that 
were given by the provincial assay offices, such as 
those of Newcastle, Chester, Exeter and Norwich 
or Sheffield. 

He must know that, in connection with Chester, 
there were sometimes five hall-marks, and some- 
times six. He must remember that in London 
there are five hall-marks from 1784, and preceding 
that date, as a rule, four. 

He must remember that the leopard under one 
of the marks is crowned until 1822, and after that 
has no crown, and that the alphabets that give 
the date letter have only twenty letters in them, 
instead of twenty-six, except once, in 1696, when 
there are but nineteen. 

Then, he must know all about the Higher 
Standard mark, when all plate between March, 
1697, and the end of 1719 had to be of higher 


44 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


value than the coinage, to prevent clipping, and 
is marked with the Britannia and the lion’s head 
erased, 

If he finds it without the lion’s head, he must 
know it was intended to be exported, and in his 
pocket-book he should have a list of the date 
letters, and notes as to the shapes of the shields 
in which they are contained. Very often, these 
can be obtained from Whitaker’s Almanack. 

There are some wonderful pieces of plate in 
existence. The City Companies of London have 
amazing treasures, and so have many of the 
provincial Corporations. The election cup of 
Winchester, which is proved to have been made 
in Queen Mary’s time by the Marygold that can 
be seen inside it, is a very notable thing, but the 
collector must always bear in mind when pieces 
of silver were introduced into use. I have seen 
a fish slice dated 1712, when there were no fish 
slices. I have heard of dessert knives with a date 
of Queen Anne’s time, or William the Third’s, and I 
knew a collector who once begged his silversmith to 
obtain for him an Elizabethan coffee-pot with a 
black handle, entirely forgetting that such a thing 
it would be impossible to find ; it was like another 
collector who begged a dealer to find him an 
Elizabethan hat and umbrella stand, and who, 
like the first-named one, was possessed of money 
without knowledge. 

In Lord Swaythling’s collection I saw an 


OLD SILVER 45 


extraordinary ostrich-egg cup, given to a parson 
by his parishioners in the City in 1623, “ for his 
painstaking with us by his often preaching.”’ 
I wonder whether it was intended in an ironic 
sense! It was a curious way of throwing an egg 
at an orator. 

A piece of plate has recently come to light that 
was engraved by Hogarth when he was apprenticed 
to Gamble. I believe it will be illustrated in a 
new book on Hogarth, but I quite expect that 
more pieces of Hogarth’s work will turn up. 

If the collector is lucky enough to get als of an 
Irish silver ring, do not let him call it a ‘‘ potato 
ring,’ its right title is a “‘dish ring.’ It should 
be different in size whether turned towards the 
top or the bottom, and it was intended to hold 
the hot dishes, and protect the polish of the table 
from them. It certainly often held a wooden 
bowl containing potatoes in their skins, because 
they were served in this fashion in Ireland, but 
just as frequently, it held other dishes, and yet 
certain collectors, who do not understand the 
reason, will always talk of it as an “ Irish potato 
ring.” 


CHAPTER VII 


STAINED AND PAINTED GLASS 


HAD an opportunity some time ago of seeing 
[ a collection of pieces of stained and painted 
glass that had been made by an antiquary 
specially interested in that subject. A _ great 
walker, he made a habit of walking and driving 
about various country districts of the South of 
England, and in various places he picked up, 
from time to time, examples of old stained and 
painted glass. 

Pursuing this hobby for many years, he 
eventually disposed of several of his choicer 
pieces for a considerable sum. He made a point 
of visiting churches that were to be restored, well 
knowing by experience that both incumbents, 
architects and builders were often very careless 
respecting old glass. 

Sometimes they cared very little about it, 
sometimes they forgot all about it; and he was 
able to buy pieces that were discarded and, some- 
times more or less complete lead lights, that were 
considered unimportant. 

He used to talk to the various cottagers, and 


sometimes found that during previous restorations, 
46 


STAINED AND PAINTED GLASS 47 


they had rescued odd bits of glass, or lights, and 
had set them into their own windows, or had 
preserved them in some other way. By dint of 
exploring out-of-the-way villages, he gathered 
together a collection quite remarkable and 
important. 

In later years there has been a wider apprecia- 
tion of the beauty of old glass. It is not as easy 
as it was in his time to form such a collection, but 
the beauty of the objects is undeniable. 

There is still, unfortunately, a great deal of 
carelessness and indifference regarding the more 
or less damaged windows, or odd lights, which 
appear here and there, and which are regarded by 
those who are repairing or restoring ecclesiastical 
buildings as of small importance. 

I should be the last person to advise that glass’ 
which has appeared in any ecclesiastical building 
should ever be removed, but this is certainly very 
often done, and a collector who has time to 
spare, and who is inclined to cycle about the 
more remote parts of England, could, I am 
convinced, gather together quite as beautiful a 
collection as did the man to whom I refer, obtain 
great joy from his collection, and, eventually, 
if he thought fit, derive considerable benefit 
therefrom. 

It is important, if possible, to preserve some 
knowledge of where the glass came from, especially 
when the medallions represent heads or coats of 


48 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


arms, because a great deal of additional informa- 
tion is obtained when the district is known, and 
there is then always the possibility of being able 
to identify either the persons or the heraldic 
achievements, 

The collector will soon be able to determine 
something of the age of the glass which he picks 
up, and in the fine early pot metal, he will discover 
some gorgeous colours, and if able to use the lead 
slips with which the windows are put together, 
he can, by contrasting colour with colour, have 
in his own house, some glorious jewelled light 
effects from pieces of this glass, however small 
they may be. © 
_ He should be advised to reject nothing in the 
way of old glass that is offered him, however 
insignificant in size it may be; some of the 
smaller pieces of the red and blue, such as was 
used with gorgeous effect in some of the smaller 
churches in York, are very desirable. 

Sometimes it may be possible to find out actually 
who was the glass maker who was responsible for 
it; for instance, in York, the work of a man 
named Peckitt is often to be found, and his colours 
can almost certainly be identified. 

It will be very seldom that the collector will be 
ablé to get hold of anything like a complete panel 
or part of a window, but he will often find pieces 
that can be put together, and sometimes, even in 
the same village, various persons may possess bits 


STAINED AND PAINTED GLASS 49g 


of glass which have all come from some discarded 
lancet in the village church. 

Some of the curiosity shops yield panels of 
Swiss or German stained glass, which have been 
brought over by collectors and then eventually 
discarded, and considerable excitement may be 
obtained in wandering from shop to shop, and 
finding pieces of stained glass worthy of being 
added to a collection, and leaded together for the 
decoration of one’s own house. 

There are probably not many persons who are 
able to take the long walks or rides that are 
necessary in order to obtain glass, and every 
collector must be prepared for many disappoint- 
- ments. 

Many a village will be found to have nothing 
whatever to offer him, and he will draw blanks on 
frequent occasions, but it is surprising how much 
glass has escaped from the parish churches, through 
careless restoration, and how often small houses 
have, either fastened into the window, or set up 
against it, bits of glass of no particular importance 
to the owner, that never ought to have been 
removed from the ecclesiastical buildings in the 
village, and which will be spoils of great delight 
to the collector of stained glass. 

Twice at least in my experience I have seen in 
ugly vicarage windows, pieces of old glass set in 
to lights or corners, which generations ago were 


removed from the parish church, and, in at least 
D : 


50 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


two cases, had I been a collector, the incumbent 
was perfectly willing to sell to me these odd pieces 
of glass, which he deemed ugly and of small 
importance, if in return I could have supplied 
him with a piece of plain, good coloured glass in 
their stead. 

I remember, on one occasion, anata a heraldic 
window, comprising a whole series of coats of 
arms of one family, missing in two of the more 
important heraldic achievements, and discovering 
that, a generation before, the window had been cut 
to fill a smaller space, and that the two missing 
coats, which eventually were restored to the 
window, were in the possession of a man whose 
grandfather had been churchwarden at the time. 

In another case some beautiful pieces of heraldic 
glass, going back probably to the sixteenth 
century, were found in the possession of some 
children who were playing with them, and using 
them as toys. These were rescued by a collector, 
who was able by piecing them together, to find 
out whose arms they represented, and eventually 
to give himself the pleasure of returning them to 
the church from whence they had = originally 
extracted. 

The collector may be advised not to turn his 
back upon any glass on account of its bad con- 
dition ; the enamel on glass frequently chips and 
crumbles away, and the appearance is unsatis- 
factory, but old stained glass, however poor its 


STAINED AND PAINTED GLASS | 51 


condition, is always delightful in colour, and well 
worth securing and retaining. 

There are two well-known heraldic windows 
that certainly existed until comparatively recent 
times that have entirely disappeared. Of one of 
them there is a drawing by Dugdale in the library 
of the College of Heralds. It depicted various 
heraldic coats belonging to the Clifford family. 
The window is known to have been removed from 
a private chapel in Appleby Castle, but has 
entirely disappeared. In another case a sixteenth 
century window, with some fine figures in it, and 
some splendid coats of arms, disappeared from a 
village church in Northamptonshire, and has 
never since been traced. There would be con- 
siderable satisfaction if any collector were to hear 
of either of these windows, or of any portions of 
them. Old stained glass, if ever it does find its 
way into the auction-rooms, fetches year by year 
an increased and ever-increasing price, and there 
are several well-known collectors always on the 
look-out for good examples of it. 


CHAPTER VIII 


RARE POSTAGE STAMPS 


T is natural that the recent sale of the very 
rarest stamp in the world, which fetched 
some 350,000 francs (which must be counted, 

with commission, as nearly seven thousand pounds), 
should have attracted considerable attention, and 
have directed the minds of many persons to that 
curious and interesting branch of collecting known 
as philately. 

Many years ago, when quite a young man, I 
was intimately acquainted with an old lady, 
several of whose relations had gone out to New 
South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land in the 
earliest days of the settlement. She explained to 
me that she had kept all their letters. Each 
letter was in its original envelope, and there was 
a large box full of them. In proof thereof she 
showed me one envelope on which I recognised 
two of the very rarest of the large square 
New South Wales stamps. This, she told me, 
was by no means the earliest of the letters she 
had. 

I did my best to explain to her that she 
had a fortune in that box, but she was indignant 

52 


RARE POSTAGE STAMPS 53 


at the idea of persons collecting such rubbish, or 
that she should make money out of a foible so 
absurd, and by the sale of envelopes which, 
despite my best endeavours, she said were of no 
importance. 

The next time I alluded to the matter she told 
me that, to avoid any further trouble, she had 
burned all the envelopes and retained the letters 
which, in her opinion, were the only things of 
interest. So ended her chance of a fortune. 

On the other hand, to refer for a moment to the 
Ferrari sale, it ought to be noted that a stamp 
issued in British Guiana in 1850 was bought by 
Monsieur Ferrari twenty-six years ago for £1,450. 
It sold for £5,250; and another, a very rare 
stamp, of which Ferrari had the finest copy 
known, was sold to him in 1909 for £250 and 
fetched last year £1,112. 

_ Another example, although perhaps not quite 
so startling, is that of a triangular stamp of the 
Cape of Good Hope, which was bought for £125 
and sold for over £300; but an even more 
startling case is that in which a pair of Rumanian 
stamps were bought in 1904 and sold for £150. 
They then passed into Sir William Avery’s 
collection, from thence they came to Mr. Peckitt, 
and in 1g2zr they sold, in the Ferrari sale, for 
£1,222. 

Some of the choicest prices that were realised 
in 1921 were, for example, an 1856 British Guiana 


s4 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


for 4 cents, which sold for £822; an 1851 stamp 
of the Hawaiian Islands for £2,000 ; a Post-office 
Mauritius for £2,177, and another Mauritius stamp 
for £888, while the finest known copy of the 
1851 stamp of Hawaii fetched £3,900, and a superb 
one of Mauritius fetched £1,500. In the 1922 
sale there were still more startling prices. The 
largest has already been mentioned, but another 
stamp fetched £2,190, issued by a postmaster in 
the States; one of something the same kind, 
£1,250; anda blue United States stamp, £1,626. 
These figures are, of course, exciting, but it 
must be borne in mind that they were for the 
very finest examples possible, in the very finest 
possible condition, and that they represented 
the very rarest stamps that are known to stamp 
collectors. 

In some cases I imagine that these prices will 
be even exceeded, because certain stamps that 
I saw some few years ago in Mr. Henry Duveen’s 
collection are even finer than the same examples 
that existed in the Ferrari collection; and even 
poor stamps from an important collection fetch 
more money than the same would do if they were 
placed in an ordinary collection. 

There are always chances to be obtained, but 
I am afraid that few of them are likely to come 
to collectors in England, and to those that occur 
abroad there are disappointments equally in store 
with delights. 


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RARE POSTAGE STAMPS 55 


Mr. Phillips tells us a story of two keen stamp 
collectors who searched a small town that had 
done business with Mauritius, and hoped to find 
amongst old correspondence some good stamps. 
They did find two quite fine ones. To protect 
them they put them inside the back of their 
watch. Next morning the watch was stolen and, 
on being questioned, it seemed that the thief had 
thrown away the dirty pieces of paper into the fire, 
so that, although the watch was regained, the 
stamp collectors had lost their great find. 

The story of one of the British Guiana stamps 
is very well known because it belonged to an old 

lady in the Colony who, promising her clergyman 
anything she could for rebuilding the church, 
found amongst her old correspondence the two 
stamps which made her by far the largest donor. 

Like the collecting of butterflies, stamp collect- 
ing has been sneered at as a schoolboy’s hobby, 
but there are no schoolboys that I have ever 
heard of who are in a position to pay thousands 
of pounds for fine stamps, and, moreover, from 
the point of view of education, few collections 
can rival that of stamps. I know, when I was 
collecting years ago, I was taught a great deal 
about various remote places that I knew little 
of, and about various persons that I knew even 
less of, by reason of the portraits that appear on 
certain stamps, that I learned about currency and 
its varieties, about changes of dynasty, about 


56 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


delicate shades of colour, about the existence of 
small republics and states of which I knew very 
little, and about rulers and colonies and post- 
masters and founders, of whom my ignorance 
was sublime. Ornithologists and students of 
natural history can find a pleasure in stamps 
from the animals and birds finely drawn upon 
them, the artist can often appreciate their beauty, 
the historian gains facts from them as to the 
foundation and the life of youthful colonies, the 
orientalist finds strange inscriptions to decipher, 
and that which was at one time thought to be 
more or less a harmless craze, should now be 
considered as aserious scientific study, with a 
great many advantages to recommend it. 

Those of my readers who live in remote parts 
of the world may still have the opportunity of 
picking up quite choice treasures. Others who 
are wise enough to preserve the ephemeral pro- 
ductions, the stamps of new States and the stamps 
issued by various provincial authorities, in such 
countries as Russia, may yet live to reap a harvest 
of financial importance as well as considerable 
delight in forming a collection that has so many 
claims for recognition at the present day. 

They will also live in exceedingly good company, 
because the King is an enthusiastic collector and 
has a superb series of albums, many of which he 
has lent from time to time to meetings of 
philatelists. 


RARE POSTAGE STAMPS 57 


The Prince of Wales follows his father’s example 
and is, no doubt, collecting stamps in his world 
tours, while one of his rivals is the newly-established . 
King of Egypt. 

The two finest collections that I ever saw 
belong to Americans; one was at one time in 
the possession of the Earl of Crawford, who was 
President of the Philatelic Society, and whose 
albums were of wonderful interest ; the other was 
the collection already referred to belonging to 
Mr. Henry Duveen. 

There is a certain romance belonging to the 
Ferrari collection because it was bequeathed to 
the Berlin Museum, but it happened to be in 
France at the moment and was immediately 
placed under sequestration by the French 
Republic. An offer was at once made of fifteen 
million francs for the entire collection, but the 
first two portions fetched nearly six millions, and 
to all that has to be added the Government tax 
of 174 per cent. There is still a large portion of 
the collection to come into the market, and it is 
stated that there will be two or three more batches 
of it to be sold before it is exhausted. 

The man who first gave me the idea of collecting 
was Mr. F. A. Philbrick, who was for some years 
the leader of British collectors and, as a man of 
substantial means, was able to bring together 
quite a good series. Philately is now so complete 
a science that it is useless for any person, unless 


* 


58 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


possessed of very substantial means, to go in for 
it as a whole, but there are separate sections that 
are well worth studying, and persons of quite 
small means can appreciate the delight of making 
a collection, say, of Spanish stamps (a very strange 
series), of Australians, of Colonials, or of the 
various kinds of British stamps. 


CHAPTER IX 


MEZZOTINTS 


HERE are few things more attractive to 
the collector than mezzotints. In fact, 


Iam disposed to think that, amongst all 
the art productions which may be termed illustra- 
tions, there is nothing so beautiful in itself as a 
really fine impression of a good English mezzotint. 

The rich, delicate, velvety background is of 
course its main feature, and to be in good con- 
dition this velvet must have a bloom upon it, 
almost like the bloom upon a piece of fruit. 

_ Moreover, the mezzotint must have its margin, 
and this should, if possible, be complete and 
deckle-edged ; but the main thing is that the 
brilliant black bloom of the mezzotint be perfect. 

There never was a finer selection of these 
treasures than that which I saw in the Emperor 
of Russia’s own private cabinet. It comprised 
examples of the finest of the English eighteenth 
century mezzotints as well as of those that 
preceded that period. 

With every print was preserved the original 
bluish-grey tissue with which it had been sent to 
Russia, and on which, in delicate outline, was 

59 


60 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


printed the set-off of the mezzotint, just so much 
of the original bloom as had necessarily fallen upon 
the first piece of tissue paper laid upon it. 

There had been a man appointed in the Russian 
Court, ever since the time of the Empress, to 
look after the collection, to air the various pieces 
day by day, and to replace each of them with the 
original tissue in its box. 

Moreover—and this was the outstanding feature 
in the whole collection—there were preserved with 
the mezzotints the bills made out to the Empress 
Catherine, in which the great dealers of the day 
charged her sums from ten shillings up to two or 
three pounds for proof impressions that, till the 
Bolsheviks destroyed them, were worth perhaps 
five hundred or a thousand pounds apiece. 

A mezzotint is not like an ordinary engraving. 
The plate on which it is engraved is first of all 
roughened, instead of being smoothly polished as 
is done with other kinds of engravings. 

It has lines drawn upon it backwards and 
forwards and a cradle or rocker passed over it, 
which tears up the copper in various directions, 
and then, if a print was taken of the plate before 
the artist began his work the result would simply 
be a beautiful, intense black, pe plain, rich 
and soft. 

The artist then sets to work to what is called 
“scrape ’’—the technical word for making the 
mezzotint—scraping away the burr, burnishing the 





HENRIETTA, COUNTESS OF WARWICK. 


Mezzotint from Lord Cheylesmore’s Collection, after Romney. 
Scraped by J. R. Smith. 


MEZZOTINTS 61 


high lights, scraping a little less for lights that are 
not quite so high, and leaving the parts of the 
plate where the deep shadows occur almost 
untouched. 

The art was not an English one in its beginning, 
the first example being done by Ludwig van 
Siegen, a soldier in the service of the Landgrave 
of Cassel, William VI. It has been said that he 
discovered the method when he was cleaning the 
steel of his gun, but there is not much evidence for 
the truth of the story. Suffice it that the earliest 
mezzotint of which we know anything is the 
portrait of the Prince’s mother, who was reigning 
as Regent, and a letter written in August, 1642, 
proves the case. 

Van Siegen taught Prince Rupert. Why, we 
do not know, but in some way or other Prince 
Rupert persuaded van Siegen to give him the 
knowledge he so desired, and Prince ‘Rupert 
produced in 1658 his masterpiece of mezzotint, 
“ The Great Executioner.” 

The first English mezzotint portrait was Sher- 
win’s portrait of Charles II, dated 1669. Whether 
Rupert taught Sherwin how to do it, or whether 
Evelyn’s book, which describes it and which 
reproduces one of Prince Rupert’s plates, came 
into the hands of Sherwin, we are not quite 
certain, but what we do know is, that Sherwin 
acknowledged Prince Rupert as his teacher and 
dedicated the print to him. 


62 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


He was followed by a man named Place, and a 
little later by a far greater man, Abraham Bloo- 
teling, whose portrait of the Duke of Monmouth is 
perhaps the best he ever did and is as splendid 
an example of mezzotint as anyone can want to 
see. It was a very large picture, 25. inches by 
20 inches, and the brilliance of the hair in the wig, 
its soft lustre and the quality of the lace make it 
a masterpiece. There is so little of Blooteling’s 
own drawing in existence that I am disposed to 
claim for my own signed example that it is almost 
the only piece in England. It simply shows him 
as a clever draughtsman, the mezzotint reveals 
him as a superb artist. 

Conspicuous amongst the great mezzotinters, 
there stands out that wonderful man James 
MacArdell, whose illustrations of Sir Joshua 
Reynolds’s pictures are unequalled in merit. 
Others are Watts, Dixon, Pether, Purcell, Marchi, 
and Dawe, amongst the later men; and Faber, 
White, Williams and Beckett amongst the earlier ; 
but all collectors of mezzotints know in whose 
work they place their particular regard, and whose 
prints they specially covet. 

There have occasionally been wonderful 
bargains found in mezzotints. I believe that 
one of the finest examples in the Cheylesmore 
collection in the British Museum was discovered 
framed in a small country inn in Devonshire, 
and very often quite striking impressions fall 


MEZZOTINTS 63 


into the hands of collectors away in distant 
villages. ? 

Generally, however, these have had _ their 
margins cut, and so lost a good deal of their value, 
but sometimes this is not the case. Occasionally 
a picture has drifted from a big house into 
a smaller one, and still preserves its margin 
untouched, but if the collector is unable to get 
museum examples (and undoubtedly it is a very 
difficult thing to obtain such first-rate impres- 
sions), he can often find in small shops really 
beautiful mezzotints, marvellous in charm and 
glorious in effect. 

Mezzotint gives a method of illustrating 
draperies which is almost unequalled, the very 
surface and appearance of velvet, as in the 
“Master Lambton,” by Lawrence, or in the 
“Calmady Children,’’ is wonderfully expressed ; 
the long, sweeping drapery of Sir Joshua Reynolds's 
figures, silk or satin, can be set forth by no process 
with such perfection and beauty. Every line and 
gleam in the satin of Reynolds’s, Romney’s and 
Hudson’s figures, comes out with amazing effect. 

In another branch of the same subject, one finds 
groups of flowers and insects, treated with equal 
dexterity. Fortunately, the art is not extinct, 
as there are still important mezzotinters living, 
and their number does not grow less, while their 
work is as rich as that of their predecessors. 
There is no doubt that the costume and the 


64 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


coiffure of the eighteenth century lent itself to the 
beauty of engraving, and that in the early 
mezzotints the magnificence and dignity of the 
great wigs that were worn produced a wonderful 
effect. The portrait by Blooteling, after Lely, of 
“ The Duke of Monmouth,” would lose a good deal 
of its dignity if the Duke had been represented 
without his full-bottomed gleaming curly wig. 

There are good mezzotinters in France, and 
some of their productions are even more precious 
than English ones, but for charm and sheer beauty 
there is hardly anything that can be compared 
with an English mezzotint, and it has been 
generally recognised that in MacArdell, Valentine, 
Green and Dickenson, amongst the late men, and 
in White and Blooteling amongst the earlier ones, 
we have men whose work stands absolutely apart, 
and has never been surpassed. 

To come right down to the present day, there 
was Lucas, and there is Sir Frank Short, and there 
are Hurst and Robinson, all of whose works are 
worth collecting, with a view to the times that are 
coming after, but there are few collectors who 
have the enterprise to buy and collect modern 
mezzotints on their own judgment, and itis to the 
publications of Sayer, Bowles and Humphrey, of 
the eighteenth century, that the collector mainly 
goes. 

In one of the bills in the Empress Catherine’s 
collection, there was a note in Sayers’ hand- 


MEZZOTINTS 65 


writing, saying that but six impressions of a 
particular portrait had been printed, that they all 
varied slightly, and that therefore he had taken 
the liberty of sending to the Empress all six of 
them, and had charged three guineas apiece. 
Any one of these precious proofs, if it has escaped 
the hands of the Bolsheviks, would easily to-day 
fetch a thousand pounds, and very probably 
more. 


CHAPTER X 


POST-CARDS 


has suffered very much from the results 

of war, and the only reason that I mention 
such an obvious fact is that I may add that so far 
as I know, the only real advantage that the world 
has ever derived from war was the introduction 
of the post-card. Post-cards first appeared in 
connection with the Franco-German War in 1870, 
and yet this statement requires a little modifica- 
tion, because Austria produced the first post-cards 
that were ever seen, and in 1869, a few months 
before war broke out. The ideas, however, 
originated with the same person, the German 
statesman, Heinrich von Stephan (1831-1897), 
who, at a postal conference in 1865, threw out the 
suggestion of the issue of a post-card, and expressly 
said that, from a military point of view, it would 
be an exceedingly valuable advantage. The idea 
was carefully considered, and on the 26th January, 
1869, the Austrian Postmaster-General issued 
a million post-cards, and a copy of one of them 
lies before me. It bore upon it all kinds of 


inscriptions as to its use, especially a statement 
66 


T is a mere platitude to say that the world 


POST-CARDS 67 


that the post office undertook no responsibility 
for the contents of the communication, and it 
went on to add as to what kind of communication 
should be put on the card, where the communica- 
tion should be written, and so on. 

The Austrian post-cards were not a general 
success, but in the following year, the idea leapt 
into prominence, because Stephan started his field 
post-card for the use of the soldiers, and by means 
of the field post, maintained uninterrupted com- 
munication with the army in the field—using, in 
the first few months of the war, over two and a half 
million post-cards, and finding them most accept- 
able to the soldiers. These field post-cards were 
not beautiful objects, by any means. They were 
printed in black and white, they had all kinds 
of instructions upon them, and separate places 
for the insertion of details concerning the military 
rank of the writer, and they were accompanied 
by two kinds of envelopes, also introduced by 
Stephan for the use of longer communications. 
Some of these could be sent open, and so, to a 
certain extent, resembled post-cards. Stephan 
was very enthusiastic over the success of his 
post-card, and sent out circulars to all the other 
post offices concerning them, and, in 1870, Great 
Britain followed suit, introducing the small post- 
card of lilac on buff, which commenced our 
series. 

I have often wondered why there are not more 


68 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


people who collect post-cards. There is one great 
advantage that the post-card possesses over the 
postage stamp, in the fact that it is rarely, if ever, 
forged. I believe there are only two forged 
post-cards, or perhaps three, that are known to 
collectors, those for Heligoland, Japan, and 
possibly Paraguay. Post-cards are exceedingly 
artistic and charming to look at; they are far 
less costly to obtain than are postage stamps ; 
they offer an interesting hunting ground for 
persons who take delight in minor varieties, such 
as errors, and varieties of frame, lettering or 
design ; they are quite easy to keep, whether in 
albums or in bundles, and are far less likely to be 
lost than are small postage stamps, while an album 
of post-cards is quite an ornamental book, full of 
delight to a collector, and in many ways quite as 
interesting as an album of postage stamps. For 
the history of the earliest post-cards, the military 
cards, and the changes that took place in 
them, make of itself the study a very fascinating 
one. 

Post-cards came in with a rush, and yet there 
were very few countries in 1870 that made any- 
thing like an important use of them. Austria, 
Hungary, Wurtemberg, Great Britain, the Nether- 
lands, Baden and Switzerland, were the earliest 
countries to issue cards. They were followed by 
several others in 1871, and prominent amongst 
those is the exceedingly pretty blue post-card 


POST-CARDS 69 


which Canada produced in that year, and which 
is a fine piece of bank note engraving executed in 
Montreal. 

Heligoland, Belgium, Denmark, Chili and Fin- 
land followed suit. Russia did not issue any 
cards until 1872, and then came out with two or 
three varieties; the beautiful card issued by 
Ceylon belongs to that year, and the inscriptions 
in Tamil form a charming piece of decoration 
round these very pretty cards. Sweden issued 
cards in that year, followed in the next year by 
the United States, France, Luxemburg, Rumania, 
Servia, Shanghai, and the charming green post- 
card of Newfoundland, another very artistic piece 
of work, in which the Prince of Wales was repre- 
sented in Scottish costume, and this production 
was executed in bank note fashion by the American 
Bank Note Company in New York. 

From that time onwards the movement spread, 
and during the early seventies many countries, 
such as Japan, Norway, etc., and various English 
colonies, followed suit, but others lingered behind, 
and it was not till the eighties that Spain had any 
post-cards, and about the same time Argentina, 
Bulgaria, Egypt, Persia, Guatemala and Turkey 
began to issue cards of their own. Stephan’s idea 
spread slowly and steadily, until eventually, 
when we come into the eighties, we find practically 
every country in the world of any importance 
issuing and using post-cards. 


70 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Reply post-cards came out in Great Britain in 
October, 1893, but several countries had issued 
them before that time, and very charming some 
of the double issues were, especially those for 
Finland, Austria, Hungary, Bavaria and the 
German Federations. The Eastern post-cards 
were longer and narrower than those used in 
Europe, and some of. them, especially the earliest 
Japanese that were sent out, were on paper 
rather than card, in some instances on a kind 
of native rice paper, but they were found in- 
convenient, and cardboard quickly took their 
place. 

Another interesting feature of post-cards is the 
fact that there are a considerable number of what 
are called commemorative post-cards, officially 
issued in order to commemorate certain events ; 
for instance, there was one issued by the little 
republic of San Marino in 1894 to commemorate 
the anniversary of its independence; there was 
one in 1888 in New South Wales, to mark the 
fiftieth year of the issue of postage stamps in the 
colony; France issued two in 1893, one com- 
memorating the centenary of Dunkirk, the other 
the visit of the Emperor of Russia to Toulon ; 
Italy issued one in 1894, in respect to an inter- 
national exhibition; in 1895, in connection with — 
the twenty-fifth anniversary of the liberation of 
Rome; and in 1896 as a souvenir of the marriage 
of the Prince of Naples. Then such events as the 


POST-CARDS . 71 


assassination of King Humbert, the funeral of 
President Faure, the Kaiser’s visit to Constanti- 
nople, the coronation of Alfonso XIII of Spain, 
the deaths of Verdi, President McKinley and 
Zola, have been commemorated by post-cards, 
and celebrations in connection with Benvenuto 
Cellini, Victor Hugo, the visit of the Shah to 
Ostend, and the eightieth birthday of Bismarck, 
have all been made the subject of special post- 
cards, which are of interest to collectors. 

Again, there is also another series, that known 
as official pictorial post-cards, bearing the usual 
printed or impressed stamps, and yet having 
illustrations upon them of certain important 
scenes, which the particular Government of the 
day desired should be represented. There is a 
fine series of Greek cards, with views of the 
country upon them, and other series of the same 
kind were issued in Switzerland, Belgium, France, 
and Italy. There was an important series issued 
in the Transvaal to illustrate mining, and Canada 
brought out a very interesting and artistic series 
of views on some of her official cards ; Queensland, 
Cape Colony, New South Wales, and New Zealand 
did the same. These are not ordinary picture 
post-cards, but actual official cards, with Govern- 
ment stamps upon them, and are very well worth 
collecting. 

Furthermore, a collector may be interested in 
some of the curiosities of post-cards, as, for 


72 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


example, the now rare card issued in: Great 
Britain in 1872, with an impressed stamp upon it, 
and the curious, but not rare, foreign post-card 
of our own country, with a penny farthing stamp 
upon it, being half the foreign postage of the time, 
which was 24d. 

A rather rare thing very much resembles the 
impressed card just referred to, and is called a 
certificate of posting; it came out in 1877, and 
was issued at the importunate request of certain 
faddists, amongst whom the chief was a Mr. 
Clifford-Eskell, in order that people might have 
certificates that they had actually posted letters, 
newspapers or book packets. They were first 
issued on the 14th of November, 1877, in Liverpool, 
Birmingham and Bath, and then extended to 
other places, but disappeared in November, 1878, 
and had been hardly taken up at all by the public. 
Only 4,565 were sold at Liverpool, 1,119 at 
Birmingham, and but 49 in Bath, and the majority 
of the 15,000 that were issued were called in 
again and destroyed. The only real sale for 
these was on the part of some dealers, who felt 
sure that the issue was going to be a very short 
one and who bought up the certificates of postage 
in order to be quite sure that they could supply 
them to their customers. 

Collectors of post-cards are often eager to 


obtain the card that was issued in commemoration .- 


of the Jubilee of Postage, at the Guildhall in 


POST-CARDS 73 


London, and the envelope with its card enclosed, 
which was issued at the South Kensington Museum 
on the 2nd of July in the same year, 1890. There 
_ were only ten thousand of the Guildhall ones done, 
and very few of them were posted actually in the 
Hall and so acquired the diamond-shaped cancel 
mark which was made for the purpose. Of the 
South Kensington cards many were bought in an 
unused condition, but it is not often that they 
are to be found with the special ‘‘ V.R.” dated 
circular cancel stamp which was used at the 
Exhibition. 

Another treasure that British collectors are 
eager to get consists of the two varieties of the 
first United Kingdom aerial post—the halfpenny 
card in a blackish-green cover, and the penny 
envelope with its notepaper enclosed, all printed 
in red. These were intended for conveyance by 
aeroplane from London to Windsor. 

There are no great treasures, running into 
hundreds or thousands of pounds, to be obtained 
by the post-card collector, but there are many 
opportunities for turning over purchases at con- 
siderably enhanced values, and cards for which 
he gave a few pence are frequently sold for as 
many shillings; and there are some special 
varieties which, amongst collectors who under- 
stand them, run into very much higher prices. 
The collector of post-cards is pretty sure to include 
letter-cards in his collection. These did not come 


74 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


out in Great Britain until February 12th, 1892, 
but they had been used in many countries on the 
Continent before then and, curiously enough, 
have always had a greater attraction to foreign 
users than they have to Englishmen. It is quite 
certain that the use of letter-cards in Great Britain 
has been very much less in proportion than it is 
on the Continent. 

German history tells us that the Counts of Thea 
and Taxis, who had been hereditary postmasters 
for Germany, and who also, through a branch of 
the same family, carried on a similar arrangement 
in Spain, were exceedingly bitter against Stephan 
for the introduction of the post-card. They had 
already seen a considerable loss from the breaking 
down of their old monopoly, and they saw, by his 
intention to extend the use of postage, their 
emoluments were going to pass away altogether. 
They had farmed the postal service of Central 
Germany for some three hundred years, and then, 
in 1864, Stephan introduced the Government 
arrangement in Schleswig and Holstein, and in 
1866, over all the newly annexed provinces, and 
he quite quickly began to see the enormous 
advantages of simple postage ; so that to him we 
owe, not only the introduction of the card, but 
various other simplifications of postage law which 
were started in Germany, and gradually spread 
to other parts of Europe. We may decry 
the fact that our post-card was first made in 


POST-CARDS 75 


Germany, but we must nevertheless gladly give 
to Stephan the credit of having introduced an 
advantage which it is almost impossible to over- 
value, and of having started a series of cards to 
which collectors would do well to give greater 
attention and which are thoroughly worthy of 
being made the subject of an interesting collec- 
tion. 


CHAPTER XI 
THE RAREST FAIENCE IN THE WORLD 


HERE is one kind of pottery which is rarer 
than anything else of its kind, and more- 
over, it has never been copied with 

anything like accuracy. There are, I believe, no 
real forgeries of it; the existence of every piece 
is carefully chronicled, and there is huge com- 
petition for any of these pieces whenever they 
happen to come into the auction room. It is, 
perhaps, tantalising to write about it, because 
the chances of any collectors obtaining a piece of 
this ware are so remote, and yet the story of it is 
so interesting. 

When it was first discovered it was called 
Henri II ware, because it had upon it the mono- 
gram and the emblems of Henri II and also those 
of Francis I of France, and for a while that was 
the only clue people had concerning it. Then, 
all at once, a Monsieur Fillon came to the con- 
clusion that he had solved the mystery. He said 
that, in about 1529, for a certain Countess Héléne 
de Hangest, some wonderful pieces of pottery had 
been made by a potter named Cherpentier, under 


the express instructions of her librarian and 
76 


THE RAREST FAIENCE IN THE WORLD 77 


secretary, Jean Bernard, and he pointed out that 
this extraordinary ware is decorated by marks 
closely resembling those on book bindings, and 
that the ciphers and the arms and the monograms 
all resemble those made by book-binding stamps. 
He proved that the librarian had made designs 
for the lady in whose employment he was, for 
binding and for frontispieces, and it was accepted 
as almost conclusive evidence that this ware was 
made at the Castle of Thouars and that it should 
be called Oiron instead of Henri II, while a 
further proof existed in the fact that the letter 
“ G,” signifying Gouffier—the husband of Héléne 
de Hangest—came several times upon the ware, 
and that “‘H,” the initial of her own name, also 
appeared frequently, while the arms and initials 
of various families connected with her particular 
district occurred also on this ware. Therefore, 
for a long time, it bore the name of Oiron ware, 
and the evidence that Monsieur Fillon brought 
forward seemed to be absolutely conclusive. Then 
another critic took up the investigation, and two 
pamphlets were issued by a Monsieur Bonnaffé, 
in which he declared that he had proved that the 
ware was made at quite another place, called 
Saint Porchaire, and that, although specimens 
had been preserved with great care at the Chateau 
of Thouars by Monsieur Claude Gouffier, for whom 
the same librarian had acted, yet it was not made 
at that chateau but in the little village of Saint 


78 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Porchaire, and he pointed out that almost all the 
pieces had been found in the Poitou district, 
that there was a ceramic establishment at Saint 
Porchaire, that in 1552 a certain Monsieur Charles 
Estienne had spoken of the beauty of the Porchaire 
ware, and that in 1566 a local poet had sung its 
glories in his poems. 

There, for the present, the matter has to 
rest, and connoisseurs use all three names— 
Henri II, Oiron, and Saint Porchaire — when 
they speak of this exceedingly beautiful ware, 
which is sometimes called a ware of Touraine 
and sometimes a ware of Poitou, and no 
one has been able to prove really where it was 
made. 3 

It is very remarkable in its appearance: pale 
creamy colour, marked with a black and white or 
red decoration, in the form of a series of fine 
stamps of arabesque detail, and it would appear 
that the space that the tools cut in the pottery 
were filled in with another coloured paste, either 
red or green or black, and then the whole thing 
was glazed and tooled down to a uniform smooth- 
ness, almost, in parts, as if it had been turned in 
a lathe, and on to this surface figures and other 
decorations were attached, which were also made 
in the same creamy clay, and also had, inlaid 
upon them, other coloured clays; generally green 
or blue, and then they, in their turn, were smoothed 
down, so that the whole ware is covered with 


THE RAREST FAIENCE IN THE WORLD 79 


what appears to be a kind of inlaid effect of colour 
upon a creamy ground. 

Some of the pieces, notably the wonderful 
candlestick in the South Kensington Museum, | 
have seated figures and mask faces, with floral 
decorations and cherubs’ heads, all wrought with 
extreme dexterity and all decorated in this 
intricate system of fine design, interlacing scrolls 
and devices, forming an exquisite incrustation, 
and all belonging to the period from 1520 up to 
1550, generally known as the Renaissance 
decoration. 

As soon as any of this ware was discovered it 
was admired and appreciated, but perhaps it was 
not until the sale of the Fountaine collection at 
Narford Hall, on June 16th, 1884, that the Saint 
Porchaire ware attracted this special attention in 
England. Underneath a bed in one of the less 
important rooms in the house was found a rush 
basket, very carefully fastened up, and inside, 
packed away with the greatest possible precaution, 
were discovered three fine pieces of this ware— 
a candlestick, a salt-cellar, and a biberon. 

The candlestick had the arms of France and 
the Montmorency arms on it, and fetched three 
thousand five hundred guineas; the salt-cellar 
fetched fifteen hundred guineas ; and the biberon 
a thousand guineas, and all three pieces were 
illustrated in the catalogue. 

In July, 1892, another wonderful piece came 


80 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


up for sale in the Magniac collection—a splendid 
ewer which had been in the possession of Monsieur 
Odiot, a goldsmith and well-known collector in 
Paris, and which Mr. Magniac had purchased in 
1842. It was only fourteen and a half inches 
high, and it fetched three thousand eight hundred 
guineas, passing into the possession of one of the 
members of the Rothschild family. 

The Rothschilds have always taken a very keen 
interest in this particular ware and have regarded 
it as specially suited for their collections, and 
whenever pieces have come up for sale they have 
been eager competitors for it. At one time 
Sir Anthony de Rothschild had seven pieces, 
Baron Lionel two pieces, Baron Alphonse three, 
Baron Gustave two, and Baron James one, and, 
in all probability, all the pieces that have ever 
been bought by the Rothschilds are still in the 
possession of some member or other of that 
family. 

One small piece came to the South Kensington 
Museum in the Salting Collection. It had origin- 
ally belonged to the Duke of Hamilton, and was 
sold at the Hamilton Sale, in 1882, for £1,218. 
It then passed to the Spitzer Collection, and I well 
remember Mr. George Salting’s excitement when 
he came home from Paris and was able to tell me 
that he had secured this little tazza for £1,500, 
and how he had been opposed by one member of 
the Rothschild family who had bid against him 


THE RAREST FAIENCE IN THE WORLD 81 


step by step for it. It was not one of the great 
pieces, nor one of the most beautiful, but it is an 
object of considerable charm, and bears upon it 
the interlaced crescents of Diane de Poitiers. It 
is, of course, creamy ground, with the exquisite 
and delicate designs upon it that are embossed 
with the book-binding stamps and filled in with 
coloured clays, and just slightly enriched with 
touches of other colour, and it occupies an 
important place in the middle of the Salting 
earthenware case in the Museum and is numbered 
1,233. 

In 1892 a salt-cellar that had been in Madame 
D’Yvon’s collection came up for sale, quite a small 
piece, and that was at once secured by one of the 
Rothschilds at a price rather over a thousand 
pounds. When, in 1891, Mr. Chaffers tried to 
make up a list of all the pieces of this precious 
ware that were known to him he had to confess 
that the greater number of pieces were in France, 
but that there were then twenty-six pieces in 
England, of which six were in the South Kensing- 
ton Museum. Since then the number has, I am 
afraid, been reduced because the Magniac vase, 
one of the pieces that belonged to the Duke of 
Hamilton, the pieces that belonged to Mr. George 
Field, the example from the Malcolm collection, 
and the example from the M. T. Smith collection, 
have ail been sold and are believed, every one of 
them, to be in French collections. 

F 


82 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


There is no other ware in existence of which all 
the pieces have been so carefully catalogued as 
this. It is now a great many years since a piece 
has come into the market; probably the last 
occasion was in 1893, and the prices now would 
be considerably higher than they were even at 
that time. At one moment there existed five 
pieces in Russia, all in the Imperial collection, 
but when I was last in that country I only saw 
two, in the Hermitage Gallery. One more was 
declared to be at one of the Emperor’s houses, 
but I did not see it at either of the three palaces 
I visited. As, however, the Emperor had a great 
many palaces, I think it is quite possible that it 
still exists. Of the fourth and fifth pieces I could 
hear nothing, and I wonder now very much as to 
what has become of the two pieces that I did 
actually see. 

The opportunity here fora skilful collector is an 
unrivalled one. If he could but find the wonderful 
biberon which at one time belonged to Prince 
Galitzin, and which certainly was supposed to 
have gone to the Emperor of Russia, there is a 
fortune waiting for him, because it was one of the 
finest pieces of the whole series, exquisite in 
colour, rivalling the wonderful candlestick at 
South Kensington in its grace of composition and 
dignity of design—a piece for which there will be 
a very great competition, if it ever again should 
come into the market. 


THE RAREST FAIENCE IN THE WORLD 83 


There is a cup with a cover in the Cluny Museum, 
there are five wonderful pieces in the Louvre, a 
large jug, that was evidently intended for some 
ecclesiastical purpose, because it is decorated with 
a crucifix and with religious emblems ; a splendid 
candlestick ; four fine salt-cellars, and two tazze. 

There is one tazza at Sévres in the museum, 
and there is an odd cover of a cup. Another 
cover belongs to the D’Uzes family, and yet 
another cover was obtained in the South of 
France and passed into the collection of Monsieur 
Delessert, so that there is every opportunity for a 
skilful collector to try to find the cups to which 
these three covers belong, and it is quite a possible 
thing that in some small town in Poitiers there 
may be lurking yet these missing cups or some 
other pieces of this extraordinarily beautiful ware. 

Once it has been seen it will never be confused 
with anything else. It is entirely different to any 
other ware that has ever been made. Its decora- 
tion is so pure and so delightful, its charm is so 
incomparable, and when one realises that not 
more than about sixty-five pieces are known to 
exist and that some of these are imperfect, there 
is plenty of room for the zest of a collector. 
Moreover, every piece differs, there are no two 
pieces in the least alike, and pieces have been 
found from time to time in all sorts of curious 
places. One of the most remarkable pieces, a 
ewer, was discovered as recently as 1887 at 


84 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Bourges, in the house of a Monsieur Rhodier, 
who had inherited it from his ancestors and had 
always regarded it as a very special piece, but had 
no idea of its supreme value until Monsieur Stein 
purchased it for three thousand pounds and added 
it with great glee to his collection. 

We are fortunate in England to possess such 
fine pieces as the two salt-cellars, the salver, the 
two tazze (one with a cover and one without), 
and the candlestick in the South Kensington 
Museum, and to have been able to have added to 
the national wealth the little piece which Mr. 
Salting bequeathed in later years. There are not 
many chances for the collector, but they are worth 
bearing in mind, for the ware is so beautiful and 
so rare that every effort to obtain a piece of it is 
well merited. Failure may probably be the 
result, but at the same time there is always the 
possibility of success. 


CHAPTER XII 


BAXTER PRINTS 


AXTER prints are objects of considerable 
B beauty and charm. They represent a 
particular historic epoch, and, moreover, 
are steadily increasing in value, but their collec- 
tion is a somewhat sore subject with me because 
I have a clear recollection of how many of them 
have been destroyed in my own childhood and, 
I am afraid, by myself. 

In my nursery at home we had the various 
numbers of ‘‘ The Child’s Companion,’ “‘ The 
Missionary Memorial,’ ‘‘ The Missionary Labours 
_of Dr. Robert Moffat’ ; several of those interesting 
books by Robert Mudie, such as the ones on the 
“ Feathered Tribes,” ‘“‘ The Air,” ‘‘ The Sea’’ and 
“The Natural History of Birds”’ ; ‘“‘ Evenings at 
Home,” by Anna Barbould; Campbell’s book on 
the death of the Rev. John Williams; Williams’s 
own narrative of his missionary enterprise, and 
more than one example of the Religious Tract 
Society’s “ Scripture Pocket-Books.”’ All of these 
contained illustrations by Baxter, and all of these 
books were carelessly destroyed by a group of 


children, of whom I was one. Yet, after all, one 
85 


86 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


has to thank the destructive ingenuity of children 
for the fact that the Baxter prints have become so 
rare and are so well worth collecting. 

A little later on in my life I remember seeing a 
copy of Baxter’s Pictorial Key to the ’51 Exhibi- 
tion and Baxter’s ‘‘ Gems of the Great Exhibition, ” 
the latter book containing several of his illustra- 
tions, the former a list of his prints, and these 
again were in process of destruction by children. 
The prints in colour were very attractive, and 
they often adorned books that possessed only a 
certain ephemeral interest, with the result that 
the books were destroyed, the illustrations taken 
out of them, and many of them, in consequence, 
have become very scarce. 

I have also a distinct recollection of a three-fold 
screen, composed of canvas, on to which all kinds 
of illustrations were pasted, and in an old childish 
scrap-book now before me I find traces of certain 
of the coloured pictures having been taken out, 
and I believe they were fastened on to this screen 
and covered over with a kind of varnish to keep 
them clean. The screen has of course vanished 
long ago, and with it the Baxter illustrations, 
including, I am quite sure, an example of his 
masterpiece—the Coronation of Queen Victoria, 
which is now worth a considerable sum, say, 
perhaps, nearly forty pounds. 

Another very rare Baxter print represented the 
arrival of the Queen to open her first Parliament, 


BAXTER PRINTS 87 


and that is just as precious as the Coronation one 
and as beautiful; the launching of the wooden 
ship of war, Tvafalgar, is another very rare one; 
but perhaps the rarest of all is one about which 
it is even doubtful whether it exists—‘‘ The 
Reliance in full sail off Hong-Kong.” This is 
particularly mentioned in a newspaper of 1843 as 
in existence, but none of the collectors up to the 
present time, as far as I know, have been able to 
find it; and if they do succeed in obtaining it, 
probably all the Baxter prices will go by the 
board in the demand to obtain this particular thing. 

Baxter is dismissed with a word or two in the 
“Dictionary of National Biography,’’ far more 
attention being paid to his father; but he was a 
great man, the inventor of the oil process of 
making colour prints and he took infinite pains 
in their preparation, and produced, not only the 
first successful prints in colour that possessed any 
distinctive beauty, but also, in his own particular 
way, the very best that were ever done. 

Baxter prints are marvellous, because his 
‘presses were not like the modern ones, which all 
work with “ undeviating exactness,’ but they 
were hand presses and every one of his blocks 
demanded a separate printing, and some of them 
as many as ten, fifteen, or even twenty printings, 
and yet the register is extraordinarily exact and 
the prints will bear the closest examination with 
a strong glass and will not suffer under it. 


88 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


How exactly Baxter executed his prints no one © 


is able to say. We know the working up to a 
certain point, we appreciate the exquisite quality 
of the paper, we understand the brilliancy of the 
colours, but there were many secrets in his process 
which have never been revealed, and which were not 
revealed even to those persons who worked after his 
time, under his licence, such as Bradshaw, Kron- 
heim, Le Blond and Myers, so that their results, 
fine and delightful as they are, are not as perfect 
as Baxter’s. Some of Le Blond’s, however, are 
well worth collecting, and are excellent examples 
of fine.colour printing. : 

In 1888 the Baxter plates and blocks passed 
from Le Blond’s hands (he having obtained them 
from Baxter) into the hands of a Mr. Mockler, and 
he it was who, in 1893, compiled the first list of 
Baxter prints and started the Baxter Society. 
It issued a journal, but it only ran for three 
numbers and then the society became extinct. 
Mr. Mockler’s collection was sold by auction in 
1896, and in that year Mr. Bullock issued his 
catalogué of Baxter prints, and since that time 
there have been several catalogues and articles 
on these wonderful pieces of colour printing. 
The contents of all of them were, however, 
summed up by Mr. Courtney Lewis when he 
issued his manual on Baxter in 1908 and gave a 
very careful catalogue and description of all the 
prints of the existence of which he was aware. 


“ 


BAXTER PRINTS 89 


This is now the standard book on the subject, and 
‘to it all collectors must be referred, because 
Mr. Lewis not only describes the prints, but 
speaks about their extraordinary variety, and in 
many instances tells of the value of them up to his 
time. Since his day, however, the prices have 
been considerably augmented, and really fine 
examples of Baxter prints are worth at least 
thrice, and perhaps even four times, what they 
were in 1908. The latest edition is of 1919. 
Collectors have to be very careful about varieties. 
_Take, for example, one of the gems of the 1851 
Exhibition, the statue of the young girl kneeling 
and veiled, called ‘‘ The Veiled Vestal.’ It is to 
be found on a green pedestal, on a red pedestal 
with a blue background, and with a dark red 
background; and all these varieties have differ- 
ent values, that with the green pedestal being by 
far the rarest. The portraits of Queen Victoria, 
of which there were several, are amongst the 
most notable, the one called ‘“‘ The Large Queen,” 
a block 154 inches by 114 inches, published about 
1859 (a print made by at least twelve printings), 
is worth from ten to twenty pounds, according to 
condition; and the one called ‘‘ The Small 
Queen,” 44 inches by 3 inches, published about 
1850, about half that price; but if on a Baxter 
mount, very considerably more. There is also 
a demand for the portraits of Prince Albert, Jenny 
Lind, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Nelson, the Duke of 


go EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Wellington, Napoleon III, the Empress Josephine, 
and the Reverend John Wesley, but the scarcest 
of all are portraits of Charles Chubb, the well- 
known lock manufacturer, and Maria, his wife. 
It is said that there were not more than about 
ten or fifteen pairs of these prints finished. Baxter 
produced them about 1843 or 1844 on the recom- 
mendation of Dr. Hoole, of the Wesleyan Mission- 
ary Society, who married one of Mr. Chubb’s 
daughters, for the special benefit of the members 
of the Chubb family, and they hardly ever have 
been known to come into the market, although 
collectors are always on the look out forthem. A 
pair last year fetched £700. 

Another of the very rare ones is called “ The 
Abolition of Slavery,’ announced to be published 
in 1840. It was described in the advertisement 
and a good many subscriptions were received for 
it, and as it was to contain 130 portraits of friends 
of the Abolition Movement, there was a great 
demand for it. Yet, curiously enough, not one 
collector can boast of possessing a copy of it. 

It may be taken for granted that there are 
practically no forgeries of these prints. Baxter 
prints in colour are-from Baxter plates or blocks, 
either made by Baxter himself or his son, or by 
Brooks or Le Blond, but as to the details that 
distinguish these various makes the collectors 
must be referred to the book already mentioned. 
The prints are much more important if they are 


BAXTER PRINTS gr 


on Baxter’s own mounts, and if they are signed 
and dated. The earliest of all is the one called 
“ Butterflies,’ which came out in 1829-—a book 
illustration, and now a very rare thing, worth £80 
in fine condition. It was probably an experi- 
ment, because for five years there was no other 
example, and then came three representing birds 
—dippers, grebes, and the eagle and vulture. 
These also are rare, and as the beginning of a 
very long series, extending to nearly four hundred 
prints, they are of particular interest. 

Of course, not all Baxter prints are in colours ; 
the best are so, but there are what are called 
Baxterotypes, which were not in colour (although 
two of these were by other printers produced 
actually in colour), and there are some prints in 
red, somewhat approaching a Bartolozzi red, 
but not quite the same tone ; but what collectors 
want are the coloured ones, and they should be 
strongly recommended not to expose them to the 
light, because they fade, the flesh tints being 
especially liable to disappear. They should be 
mounted on sheets of paper, and kept with tissue 
paper between them so that the fine prints should 
not be rubbed. 

The address on the mounts, by the way, is 
always Northampton Square. There was a great 
demand for the various country scenes, and, in 
consequence, these are rare, and another series 
_ that collectors are anxious to get hold of was 


92 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


issued at the time of the Crimean War, and two 
interesting ones are ‘‘ News from Home” and 
‘News from Australia,” issued at the time of the 
gold digging excitement. 

One of the most beautiful is called “ The 
Small Bride,’’ done from a painting by Miss 
Corbeaux. Mr. Mockler used to say that only 
a hundred of it were in existence, but a much 
later writer spoke of about two hundred and 
fifty. It was originally issued in a gold and 
velvet frame, and on a mount, and is a marvellous 
piece of execution. In its original issue, it is very 
rare indeed; as a pocket book illustration, it is 
almost as rare. 

There are two others, called the First bene 
sion, which are precious pocket book plates. 
Some people say that the second plate was not 
by Baxter at all, and about this there is some 
controversy. 

Two strips, representing Fairies, printed for 
the tops of needle boxes, are marvellously 
dexterous, and amongst them appear quite 
recognisable portraits of the well-known dancers 
Taglioni and Grisi. Two or three other sets for 
needle boxes are well worth obtaining, The 
Regal, The Floral, The Tarantella, and the 
Greek Dance, and ten oval portraits of Mutiny 
heroes with Queen Victoria is one of the precious 
things which collectors are eager to get. 

Of the Rev. John Williams, the missionary 


BAXTER PRINTS | 93 


murdered in the South Seas, there are a number 
of portraits, at least nine. They are all of them 
worth obtaining, what is called the “Large 
Williams,” a print 15in. by 12#in., being the most 
precious of all, although there was one print 
announced in 1843, very carefully described, 
which has never been traced ; if it could be found, 
it would be more important than either of the 
others. 

Collectors are eager to get the original pocket 
books, with the original illustrations in them, and 
for these they pay quite high prices. The pocket 
books began in 1847, and they extended on down 
to about 1858, at varying intervals; some of them 
were Scripture pocket books, others were called 
ladies’ pocket books, Cabinets of Fashion, 
Souvenirs, Pocket Journals, Pocket Albums, etc. ; 
and there are at least twenty pieces of music 
which bear Baxter’s illustrations upon them, 
I can remember that some of my earliest lessons 
on the piano were given from Jullien’s “ Album 
of Music,’”’ on which was a charming illustration 
by Baxter, called “The Reconciliation.”’ Mr. 
Lewis says it was printed in eleven blocks. It 
was issued at about three shillings, and is now 
easily worth as many pounds, but all the music 
albums, of which there were many in the nursery 
where I learned, have long ago passed into the 
waste-paper basket, to my very great regret. 


CHAPTER XIII 


CURIOUS OLD WINE 


WELL-KNOWN collector, who has been 

for years engaged in purchasing fine porce- 

lain, pictures, drawings and other things 
of similar character, has now turned his atten- 
tion to quite a different branch of collecting, and 
part of his museum is contained in two rooms 
in his cellar. The idea that he has adopted 
strikes me as being an interesting one, and some 
of my readers may perhaps be glad to have a few 
details concerning this somewhat unusual branch 
of collecting. He is a connoisseur of wines, has 
given careful attention to them, is sufficiently 
scrupulous to have two cellars, one for red and 
one for white, and has great joy in bringing 
together examples of special and unusual vintages, 
and affording his friends the satisfaction of 
sampling and tasting them. 

In old days it used to be a fashion to study 
wine and to take great care concerning the 
vintages that one placed before one’s guests. 
The stocking of a cellar was part of a gentleman's 
occupation, and needful information concerning 
wine was passed on from generation to generation, 

94 


CURIOUS OLD WINE 95 


Nowadays, when people live in flats, and have 
only cupboards for their wine, the idea has passed 
away, and few people care to study the special 
features of old wines. A well-known connoisseur 
tells us that we drink far too much champagne now- 
adays ; “we take it,’ says he, “from the oysters 
to the cigars ; we smoke too much to appreciate 
fine wine ; we seldom sit and enjoy a really good 
claret.’ He goes on to add that we ‘‘ gulp down 
our wines and do not sip them; we are some- 
times shocking enough to take grape juice and 
malt liquor in the same night ; we expect wines 
to taste always as good, whatever the food, the 
weather, the health or the temper, and we ignore 
altogether the fact that wine has a scent—a 
bouquet—as well as a flavour ; that every grape 
was once a little flower, and that every drop of 
wine was once hidden within a grape.” Finally he 
says we too ‘‘ often choose our food first of all, and 
then choose our drink afterwards, whereas, in 
many instances, the reverse should be the case, 
and we are too ready to drink heavy wines, in 
the way of fruity ports, neglecting bouquet, style 
and finesse, and spoiling our palate for the more 
exquisite of the clarets.”’ 

All this is amazingly true, and so one seldom 
hears of a cellar-book being carefully kept up ; 
still more seldom of the catalogue of a wine cellar. 
One such catalogue lies before me, prepared for 
Mr. Pierpont Morgan, in a very limited edition, 


96 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


and issued to his friends, and it contains a 
wonderful list of wines, because he collected 
choice vintages in the same way as he did choice 
pictures, drawings, or miniatures. 

My London friend, acting in a much smaller 
method, has pursued the same sort of line. In 
clarets, he naturally gives the principal place to 
what are known as the first growths, Lafite, 
Margaux, Latour and Haut-Brion. These are the 
great clarets, and every one of them is a joy to a: 
carefully prepared palate. 

Then, he knows that there are great claret years ; 
that 1875 was the largest and finest on record ; 
that 1887 was very good, full and round, but also 
rather dry ; that 1890 yielded what is known as 
a big vintage, and 1893 one with a fine flavour, 
and that 1899 was a splendid vintage; while 
some other years, of course, must be carefully 
avoided. One would not, however, confine one’s 
attention in claret to these four great growths, 
because there are two or three other growths 
that are quite as remarkable, and amongst 
them stands out pre-eminently the Chateau 
Mouton Rothschild of 1874. That year, as all 
claret lovers know, was a very strange, variable 
one. Some of the vintages were good, and some 
were poor, but the Chateau Mouton Rothschild of 
that year was extraordinary ; it was a wonderfully 
robust wine, and my friend is lucky enough to 
possess some of the magnums of it, a very choice 


CURIOUS OLD WINE 97 


and exceptional possession. There are also some 
magnums of a very old claret, Lafite of 1860, 
some of Margaux of 1888, and a wonderful Latour 
of 1878, while of the smaller brands, I notice 
particularly some D’Issan in magnums of 1893, 
and he has not neglected another famous growth 
called Pape-Clement. | 

Naturally, however, he has not confined his 
attention to clarets. Port has been called the 
king of wines. Madeira has been dubbed the 
queen, but a person who really appreciates a fine 
wine, may be pardoned for putting clarets and 
burgundies ahead of either of them, only they 
must be sipped, one must not smoke, and the 
connoisseur must appreciate the bouquet. I 
would not, however, say a word against port, 
especially in certain respects. Taylor's 1890 


~ is as delicate a wine as one could possibly 


want to drink, and has kept better in 
the cellar than have some of the earlier 
vintages, and is therefore less likely to require 
recorking. Taylor’s 1896 is another wonderful 
wine, and some connoisseurs think that Martinez’s 
1884 is even better. 1847 was of course the 
magnificent year, but 1863 was really just as 
fine. © 

Of the very old ports, ’34 and ’47 were the great 
years, 53 was an excellent wine, ’73 a fine wine, 
‘78 a good wine, and ’87 was equally good. 
93, of course, was disastrous in every possible 

G 


98 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


way, and since then, there have been one or two 
fair years, but nothing that has come up to 
’87 or 89. 

Fortunately, the days of the three-bottle men 
are all gone. It is not a great deal of port that 
we drink nowadays, and it is generally either 
Croft’s, Taylor’s, Dow’s, Sandeman’s, Cockburn’s 
or Offley’s. Cockburn in magnums of 1887 was 
a very remarkable wine, so was that of 1878. 
Sandeman’s of 1887 is very well worth collecting. 
Cockburn’s of 1868 is another wonderful wine, 
but my friend is also recommending those who 
come after him to start the old idea again of 
laying down some wine for those who come 
after us, and he is trusting to his own judg- 
ment, and that of his wine merchant (a very 
remarkable man, by the way), and putting 
down some clarets and some ports that will be 
interesting and precious to his children and grand- 
children. | 

In his white wine cellar, some of his wonderful 
treasures are connected with Chateau Yquem, 
the great Sauterne, a wine with a marvellous 
bouquet and exquisite flavour. It must, of course, 
be bottled at the Chateau, and marked with the 
brand of Lur Saluces, and 1861 and 1870 vintages 
are amazingly choice treasures, while 1893 is in 
some ways quite as fine, and 1890 well worth 
securing. Then, of course, he has got some splendid 
Deinhards, Berncastler, 1904, an amazingly fine 


CURIOUS OLD WINE 99 

wine ; 1900, not quite so important, but very 
nearly so ; 1906, quite a beautiful wine, and some 
Steinwein and some Steinberger Cabinet, the 
latter being 1890. 
To my own thinking, however, the grandest 
white wine he possesses is some Montrachet 
from the Cote d’Or of 1911, Ainé, a perfectly 
magnificent wine. | 

By the way, I suggest to him that his Moselles 
should be drunk without further delay, whereas 
his hock may go on improving for years. 

Why is it, I wonder, that sherry has gone out so 
suddenly ? It is the only wine that one can take 
at any time of the day; it is practically the only 
wine that never alters so long as it is in the 
decanter; it is the very thing to have with a 
biscuit in the morning, and to degrade it by 
putting bitters in it, is surely a terrible thing. 
What can be finer, in my friend’s opinion and mine, 
than a Bristol Cream Sherry, or than an Amontil- 
lado, especially that of 1839, and the two wonderful 
growths of ’72 and ’78 ? 

King Edward put an enormous amount of 
sherry into the market because he did not care 
for it; it should, however, be more popular than 
it is, and collectors of wine will do well to get 
hold of some choice sherries; occasionally the 
1815 Solera can be got, and one can then 
enjoy the delicate flavour of this wine at its 
best. 


100 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


One passes naturally from sherry to Madeira, 
the wine that is coming back again into popularity. 
There is an amazing Madeira in my friend’s cellar 
of 1836; there is a Cossart Gordon of 1830, and 
another of 1844, and some of the Malmsey 
Madeiras that have gone round the world are very 
rich and luscious wines, and nothing can be better 
with dessert than a glass or two of these old 
dark-coloured beauties. 

I must not, however, go all the way through 
my friend’s cellar, but just spare a few lines to 
refer to his brandies. There is a great variety 
of ideas amongst those who appreciate a liqueur . 
brandy. Some swear by Hennessy, others insist 
that Martell’s is the only brandy worth drinking ; 
personally I prefer Otard, and preferably, the 
one made in 1830 or 1836, or, if I cannot get that, 
then 1865 or 1875. My friend has perhaps fifteen 
different shippings of brandies, and one can take 
one’s choice with great satisfaction. Morgan had 
some Napoleon brandy, but his most wonderful 
was a Cognac of 1795, and a Fine Champagne of 
1797. He also had some of the wonderful green 
Chartreuse, in the embossed bottles, which was 
made at the old monastery, and which is now 
almost impossible to get, and those of us who are 
connoisseurs in liqueurs wonder when we are ever 
going to get a really good Kiimmel again because 
the present stuff is not worth drinking, and if we 
want a sweet liqueur, we pin our faith to a fine 


CURIOUS OLD WINE IOI 


orange Curacao, in its original stone cruchons, 
or else we sip with satisfaction a little delicious 
Benedictine. 

A connoisseur in wine delights in the shapes of 
the bottles and the curious squat appearance of 
some of them, and in others that have initials 
stamped into them. He decants his own wine 
with great care, he carefully keeps and exhibits 
the cork, but, above all, he drinks his wines and 
he allows his friends to do the same. Thereby, 
he is not only a collector and a connoisseur, but a 
delight and a joy to all who know him. 


CHAPTER XIV 


EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES 


England interested in Egyptian archzo- 

logy, and the great national collection 
is largely indebted for its treasures to the efforts 
of private collectors. In addition to the collec- 
tions in the national museums, there are several 
large private ones, notable amongst which may 
be mentioned that at Alnwick Castle, formed in 
the early part of the nineteenth century by 
Algernon, fourth Duke of Northumberland, and 
the collection that has been formed by the late 
Earl of Carnarvon. 

To what magnificent proportions this collection 
will eventually grow remains to be proved. No 
one yet can tell what, out of the glories recently 
discovered at Luxor by Lord Carnarvon, and his 
‘ able searcher, Mr. Howard Carter, will fall to 
Highclere Castle, but all of us who are interested 
in Egyptian antiquities hope that the Egyptian 
Government will show itself generous towards 
the man who spent so many thousands of pounds 
upon excavation, and will permit his widow to 

102 


[Vee have always been able collectors in 


EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES 103 


possess some of the choice treasures which he 
sacrificed his life to discover. 

The world has become remarkably familiar mish 
Egyptian art in these days, owing to the excellent 
photographs taken by Mr. Harry Burton, that 
have appeared in The Times and other journals, 
with reference to the amazing discoveries that 
have been made. : 

Previous to these investigations, the most 
notable collection of Egyptian antiquities ever 
brought together was that which was exhibited in 
r92I at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. In the 
little gallery of that club there were presented 
many objects so fine that connoisseurs were 
amazed at their perfection, and some of the most 
notable amongst their number had little idea 
that Egyptian art was capable of producing 
sculptures and decoration of such extraordin- 
ary beauty. A great many of the things 
exhibited in the gallery of the club were 
later on sold at Sotheby’s for very high prices, 
one notable head, the finest known example of 
Egyptian sculpture, fetching no less than £10,000. 
It would almost appear, however, as though all 
our ideas of the perfection of Egyptain art were 
to be re-estimated, in view of all the fine things 
that this newly-opened tomb presented to us. 

It is only the great collector who can afford to 
indulge his hobby to the extent of purchasing the 
very choice things, but there are a large number of 


104 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


small collectors who are gradually forming very 
interesting collections, and there are constant 
opportunities for such persons to buy beautiful 
and interesting Egyptian curiosities, for they are 
often exposed for sale in the auction-rooms and 
in the shops of the dealers. There are certain 
things in Egyptian art that are fairly easy to get 
hold of. The sepulchral figures called Ushabit, 
or “respondents,’’ are often to be found. These 
are the figures which were deposited with the dead 
to absolve the deceased in the future state from 
certain duties which he was supposed to be called 
upon to perform. They bear upon them, as a 
rule, the names of the persons for whom they were 
made, together with their titles and positions, and 
in some cases the names of the monarchs. Th 

are often beautiful in colour, of the glorious 
vitreous. blue of which the Egyptians only 
possessed the secret, and merely from the point 
of colour are beautiful, but they are of great 
importance in history because from them we have 
been able, more or less, to complete the list of 
monarchs of Egypt. We are in danger sometimes, 
in thinking of Egypt, to imagine that Egyptian 
art was always far in advance of that of other 
nations, ignoring the fact that what we call 
Egyptian antiquity spread over a period which 
started before 3400 B.c. and extended down to 
A.D. 400, ranging from what is known as the pre- 
historic and pre-dynastic period, through the 


EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES 105 


various dynasties, from the first down to the 
thirtieth, then to the Ptolemy period and the 
Roman period. During all this vast period of 
time, there were waves of progress and depression, 
periods in which Egyptian art was magnificent and 
supreme, and periods in which it was inferior to 
that of other nationalities. In its supreme time, 
it was in certain particular respects even grander 
than Greek art, and there are certain pieces, 
notably one that was once in the MacGregor 
collection, and another in the Highclere Castle 
collection, which are amongst the greatest pieces 
of portraiture in sculpture that art ever produced. 
The Egyptian objects that are easiest to obtain 
are scarabs. Why exactly the ancient Egyptians 
attached so much importance to figures of the 
dung beetle, the scavabeus, we are not even now 
quite certain, but they compared the pellet which 
the beetle rolls to the globe of the sun, and they 
regarded the insect as sacred to the sun god, and 
as representing the sun, and thus to a certain 
extent, especially when supplied with outstretched 
wings, as typical of the vivifying soul. These 
scarabs were laid upon the breast of the mummies, 
and others were placed about the body, and they 
were also used as seals, and as the bezels of finger 
tings. In consequence, there are an enormous 
number of them, and many are of peculiar interest. 
by reason of the hieroglyphics inscribed upon 
them.- Sometimes they are inscribed with refer- 


106 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


ences to the various divinities, with military 
devices, or the names of priests, or monarchs. 
They appear as pendants upon necklaces, in rows 
for bracelets, and in all kinds of arrangements for 
feminine decoration. They vary in colour and 
in size, extending from the gigantic monstrous ones 
that are huge monuments, down to the very tiny 
ones used in seal rings. 

Collectors must be warned that there are 
multitudes of forgeries about, that nothing is 
much easier to forge than a blue vitreous scarab, ~ 
and that these forgeries are even buried insuitable — 
places, so that they may be exhumed and create a 
sensation. It is impossible to educate the col- 
lector how to distinguish a forged scarab from the 
real one, although in some instances the very feel 
of the forgery gives away the trick, but it is only 
by careful study of genuine scarabs, and by con- 
sulting those who really do understand the subject, 
that the collector can avoid disappointment. 

The ancient Egyptian women were very fond of 
decoration, and a great part of the objects that 
collectors seek for are connected with the costume 
and toilet of the people; the necklaces and 
strings of beads are often very beautiful, the beads 
composed of jasper, red and dark green, porcelain, 
glass, garnet, carnelian, shell and crystal. There 
are mirrors and combs to be found, cases for 
holding cosmetics, sandals and the boxes for 
holding them, signets and finger rings in mul- 


EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES } I07 


titudes, toilet vases, and amongst the great 
treasures exhibited by Lord Carnarvon at the 
Burlington Fine Arts Club was the most amazing 
toilet box of wood veneered with ebony and ivory 
which belonged to the twelfth dynasty, say a 
period of over 2000 B.c., and which had its toilet 
vases, and its silver ornaments and knobs and its 
veneer of ivory almost complete, as it was de- 
posited in the tomb at Thebes where it was found. 

Near to that, and belonging to the same period 
and collector, was an almost equally wonderful 
thing—a gaming board of wood and ivory, with 
its little drawer and its holes to receive the ten 
gaming pins, which were also with it. 

Then there are all kinds of vases, from the very 
tiny ones used to contain unguents, to those 
of enormous size made of aragonite, alabaster, 
granite, porcelain, terra-cotta, wood and other 
materials, and often decorated in wonderful 
fashion with hieroglyphic inscriptions. One of 
the common objects for collectors is the symbolic 
eye, uta, consisting of an eye with two appendages, 
which seems to represent the eye of the cow of 
Athor, the mystical mother of the Sun, with the 
fluid dropping from it. The right eye was the 
symbol of the sun, the left of the moon, and 
eyes were used as charms and amulets, and formed 
portions of necklaces and decoration. 

There are all kinds of writing utensils found, 
and papyri. There are the wooden boxes called 


108 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


teb, with covers and ties, which were to hold 
objects of attire, and papyri; there are the 
extraordinary spoons or small bowls made of 
wood and ivory, and basalt and shell; there are 
bronze tools, chisels, adzes, knives, saws and 
mortising tools ; and then there is that very large 
group of models of animals, because secondary to 
the worship of the gods was, in Egypt, that of 
the worship of sacred animals. The Egyptians 
grouped all animals as either sacred or profane, 
and the sacred ones lived in the courts of the 
temples. The animals not deemed sacred were 
either those into which the soul of Set might have 
been thought to have divided, or those into which 
such souls as transmigrated passed, and even the 
deities who were hated had animals sacred to 
them, such as the hippopotamus, the pig and the 
ass. There are models of the ape, lion, jackal, 
ram, bull, hare, sphinx, and large numbers 
representing the cat—the sacred animal of the 
goddess Bast Bubastis—to be found; there are 
many representations of the hawk, the emblem 
of the god Horus; and one also finds the duck, 
crocodile, vulture, uraeus serpent, toad, frog and 
fish amongst these models. — 

The smaller collector is hardly likely to obtain 
a complete mummy, but he may get hold of a 
piece of mummy cloth, of portions of the wood- 
work in which the mummy was enclosed, some- 
times gorgeously decorated, strings of mummy 


EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES 109 


beads or pieces of decoration, especially painted 
limestone figures, some of which are of extra- 
ordinary beauty. Lord Carnarvon’s limestone 
statue of a lady of rank, a piece of painted por- 
traiture belonging to the Fourth dynasty, is quite 
one of the wonderful things of the world, and yet, 
even in their way, some of the smaller figures that 
may come into the possession of the amateur 
collector are, in proportion, almost as beautiful. 
There are plenty of opportunities for advantage 
in a collection of Egyptian antiquities, there is 
ample scope for speculation ;. scarabs bought for 
a very small sum often turn out to be valuable 
and rare; portions of statues, especially painted 
limestone work, are precious, and the collector 
who brings together examples of Egyptian art has 
an enormously wide field for study, and the 
pleasure of accumulating objects of remarkable 
beauty. ; 

If he confines his attention, say, to only one 
section, that of glass, he will find the beads, 
bottles or pieces of broken cups objects of extreme 
charm, full of diversity and intrinsic beauty. 

The whole section is far too large to be dealt 
with en bloc—collectors must specialise as to 
what section will particularly interest them, but 
the whole subject is full of mystery, and the 
inscriptions, when unravelled, open up stories of 
peculiar importance and reveal information about 
historic events about which we know far too little. 


CHAPTER XV 


DIAMONDS WITH A HISTORY 


N June, 1909, I had the high privilege of hav- 
ing in my hands two or three very famous 
stones, one of which was unique in its value 

and importance. It was the Hope Blue Diamond. 
This extraordinary and beautiful stone was really 
a large part of a great diamond weighing nearly 
sixty-eight carats, which at one time belonged to 
the French Crown jewels. In 1660 it was in 
the possession of Jean Baptiste Tavernier (1605- 
1686), the traveller, the author of an import- 
ant book on journeys in Turkey and Persia. 
He sold it to the King of France in 1668, and 
soon after he had parted with it, although he 
was eighty-one years old, he went off to the 
Fast, and there had a serious attack of fever 
and died. 

Madame de Montespan persuaded Louis XIV to 
give her the famous diamond. No sooner did she 
get it than her power over the King began to 
wane, and Madame de Maintenon became the 
reigning favourite. Fouquet, who was the grand 
treasurer, borrowed it once and wore it at a 


very important féte. Shortly afterwards he was 
| @ te) 


DIAMONDS WITH A HISTORY = irr 


imprisoned, and a little later on, on the 6th of 
April, 1680, he died. 

Then we hear nothing very much of this wonder- 
ful stone, which rested in my hands for a few 
minutes, until Marie Antoinette wore it at a great 
ball at the Tuileries, and occasionally, it is said, 
she lent it to her particular friend, Madame 
de Lamballe. Both the Queen and the Princess 
perished at the time of the Revolution. During 
all this time it had been in the original condition | 
that it was when Tavernier first acquired it, 
although we do not know exactly where he got it ; 
but, after the Revolution, it was decided to cut it 
and alter its shape, and it was handed over to a 
man named Fals, in Holland. His son stole it, 
the father was ruined, the son killed himself. 
Previous to his doing so he gave it, in payment 
of a debt which he dared not acknowledge to his 
father, to a man named Francis Beaulieu, who 
came from Marseilles to London with the en- 
deavour to sell it. He fell terribly ill from jail 
fever and died in a poor humble lodging. Just 
before his death he arranged with a London jewel 
dealer, whose name was Daniel Eliason, to buy the 
diamond, but when Eliason went round to pay 
over the money Beaulieu was dead and the money 
never changed hands. 

Eliason killed himself some months afterwards, 
but before he did so he sold the diamond (this 
was in about 1830) to Henry Thomas Hope of 


112 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Deepdene, the son of “‘ Anastatious”’ Hope, a man 
who was collecting pictures and fine things. It 
is always said that Hope gave eighteen or twenty 
thousand pounds for it, although it had been 
valued then at thirty thousand pounds, but this 
was all the money he would pay for it, and Eliason 
could not afford to hold it any longer. 

Hope kept the diamond for a great many years, 
and it has always been known after his time as. 
the Hope diamond and as the finest and largest 
blue diamond in the world, now only weighing 
444+ carats instead of 674, but enormously im- 
proved in appearance by its recutting, and in 
shape not a circle but a rather short oval, the 
colour being almost that of a very fine sapphire. 
From Hope it came down to Lord Henry Francis 
Hope, and his wife, who was well known as May 
Yohe, used to wear it. He had to divorce her 
in 1902 and the diamond passed out of his 
collection. 

A merchant in Hatton Garden, named Weil, 
bought it, and transferred it almost at once to an 
American merchant named Simon Frankel. But 
from the moment he possessed it he had endless 
financial troubles and worries, and after a while, 
had to get rid of the diamond in desperation, in 
the hope of saving his affairs. This was in 
1907. In 1908 it came into the possession of a 
French dealer named Jacques Colot, who almost at 
once sold it to a Russian Prince, Kanitovski, who 


~ DIAMONDS WITH A HISTORY © 113 


lent it to his mistress, a beautiful actress named 
Ladue. 

She wore it at the Folies Bergére, and when she 
had it on the Prince shot her with a revolver and 
regained possession of the diamond. Two days 
afterwards he was stabbed. Colot, who had never 
received the whole of the purchase money, went out 
of his mind, and a week after this episode he 
committed suicide. Before Kanitovski died he 
had transferred the diamond to a French dealer, 
who fell downstairs and broke his leg. He sold 
it to Montharides, a Greek, who took it to Athens, 
and very shortly afterwards was captured by 
brigands, thrown over a precipice and killed, with 
his wife and his two children. He had just 
sold the stone to the Sultan of Turkey, Abdul 
Hamid. 

It is not quite certain that the Sultan ever 
actually had it in his possession. It was given to 
a man named Abu Sabir to be polished. Abu 
Sabir said he had never had it, and he played the 
Sultan false. He was punished, thrown into a 
dungeon and there remained for some months. 
The diamond meantime disappeared. Then it was 
found in the possession of the keeper of the 
dungeon, and one fine morning he was found 
strangled. In some mysterious way or other it 
then passed into the possession of one of the 
eunuchs of the Sultan’s household, a man named 
Kulub Bey, and he was captured in the streets 

H 


114 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


of Constantinople and hanged on a lamp-post. 
Meantime, a beautiful French girl had got. hold 
of the diamond, one whom the Sultan very much 
admired. She had assumed a Turkish name and 
she was known as Salma Zubayba, and she was 
wearing it when the revolutionaries broke into 
the Sultan’s palace, and when she was killed the 
diamond was on her breast. 

Thence it came into the possession of a Turk 
named Habib, a jewel merchant in Constantinople. 
He perished in a shipwreck in the Moluccas, and 
it was declared that at last the story of the jewel 
was at an end as he must have had it in his pocket. 
But it was not so—he had left it in Paris, and it 
came into the possession of Messrs. Cartier, who 
exhibited it in the Haymarket, and there it was 
that I saw it and handled it. 

It was sold in Paris on the 22nd of June of that 
year, at the Habib sale, by Bailly & Appert for, 
it is said, £16,000, and a French dealer who bought — 
it for £28,000 sold it to Mr. Edward B. McLean 
in. America for £60,000. He gave it to his 
wife, who was a Miss Walsh, the daughter of a 
famous American mine owner. Mr. Edward Beale 
McLean had one son, Vincent Walsh, who was 
reckoned at one time as the richest child in the 
world, because he was to succeed to the fortunes 
of his two grandparents, John McLean, the owner 
of the Washington Post and of the Cincinnati 
Inquirer, and Thomas E,. Walsh, the Colorado 


DIAMONDS WITH A HISTORY = 115 


mining king. The child’s name was Vincent 
Walsh McLean, and from the time of his birth he 
was subject to very special precautions, as his 
parents had been told that he would be kidnapped. 

The house and grounds where he lived were 
surrounded with steel fences and there were 
guards to protect him in all directions. The boy 
was restless under all this care. He was allowed 
no companions, his only joy being the animals 
that were about him, which included some wonder- 
ful dogs, and especially a Russian wolf-hound which 
was considered to be the best of its race; but the 
child was never alone, either his nurse or his 
attendants being always on hand. When he was 
only eight months old an attempt was made to 
kidnap him, and then an iron perambulator was 
procured in which he used to be wheeled about 
and view the world through a cage of steel bars. 
His grandfather had given him a rosewood and 
gold cradle. 

One day one of the boy’s pet dogs escaped, and 
the lad, in great joy at getting away from his 
guardians, ran through the front gates of his 
house, down the street, accompanied by various 
other boys ; but he was soon caught and brought 
back again. He made up his mind, however, to 
get away as soon as he could and, a similar cir- 
cumstance happening soon afterwards, he slipped 
out of the gates again, ran down the street, and 
was knocked down by a motor-car and run over. 


116 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Both his parents were then away at a race- 
course in Kentucky. They came back by special 
train, they telegraphed for doctors and specialists 
and nurses, but the boy died before his mother 
could reach his bedside. She had always been 
anxious about him since she had possessed the 
great diamond. She tried to persuade her hus- 
band to refuse to complete the bargain, but the 
dealer sued Mr. McLean to carry out his contract 
and reduced the price to thirty-six thousand, 
according to one account, and to forty-two thou- 
sand according to another; and then it was that 
McLean took possession of it and gave it to his 
wife.. Three months after she had it her mother, 
of whom she was passionately fond, died after a 
sharp and sudden attack of pneumonia. Then 
she lost her boy, and the effect upon her is said 
to have been so terrible that, within a few hours, 
she was herself insane. 

The story goes that the diamond originally came 
from a Hindoo temple and that it was the eye of 
a famous god, and that all who possessed it were 
cursed after it had been stolen and the curse was 
to descend to every owner so long as the diamond 
existed. What exactly has happened to it since 
Mrs. McLean went out of her mind is not quite 
certain. There have been various rumours, but 
the best credited is that the diamond is in a safe 
deposit in New York and that it is likely to 
remain there for a very long time. It is said that 


DIAMONDS WITH A HISTORY 117 


it has been re-cut and a piece of it taken away so 
that it should no longer be the same diamond that 
it was, and that this has been done in the hope 
(no pun intended) that its tragic history should 
end and that future owners of this exceedingly 
beautiful stone should not have all the succession 
of troubles which have come to those who have 
owned it in previous years. 

With it, at the Habib sale, there were sold some 
other splendid stones, including a diamond known 
as the Princesse Mathilde, which was dazzlingly 
white, and which sold for £2,280. 

There was also offered an aquamarine diamond, 
very much the same size as a stone which now 
belongs to the English Crown, and which was 
extraordinarily curious in its colour qualities 
because, in certain lights it was almost blue, and 
under others almost green. That fetched £5,600. 
It was a much larger one than the stone of 
Princesse Mathilde and weighed over seventy 
carats, whereas her wonderful white one only 
weighed sixteen. 

The other important Habib diamond was the 
Mi Regent, a pear-shaped stone, which weighed 
fifty-eight carats and fetched £7,400; and the 
same sale included a wonderful pink diamond 
of thirty-one carats, a bluish-white one of twenty- 
three carats which fetched £3,120, a pear-shaped 
diamond of twenty-four carats, and a rosy one of 
six carats, the whole of the little group fetching 


118 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


about forty thousand pounds, or rather more ; 
but the importance of these other diamonds was 
entirely overshadowed by the long and tragic 
history which was associated with the famous 
treasure of the collection—the celebrated Hope 
blue diamond. 


CHAPTER XVI 


PRINTS BY LE BLOND 


“™O many persons are interested in the prints 
S executed under Baxter’s licence by Le Blond 
that some brief information concerning them 
is worth noting down. 
Let me make it clear that there must be no 
confusion between. the very different persons, 
Le Blon and Le Blond. The confusion has been 
made by some collectors. Le Blon was born at 
Frankfort in 1670, and at one time a painter in 
miniature, but in 1720 he came to London and 
started a process for printing mezzotint plates in 
colour. He published a work ten years later 
explanatory of his process. It came out both 
in English and in French. Two years after that 
he went to. Paris and there, a few years later on, 
he died, it is said, in 1741. He was a clever 
workman, a master of the mystery of colour in 
printing, and some of his portraits—those of 
George II and Louis XI V—and his landscapes are 
worth collecting, but do not ins often come into 
the market. 
The Le Blonds were different people altogether. 
There was a Jean Le Blond, born in Paris in 


119 


120 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


1635, a print seller, and he is said to have executed 
certain colour prints, but it is doubtful whether 
this statement is correct. He died in 1709. The 
Le Blond who worked under Baxter’s licence is 
a man of 1850 period, who printed in Baxter’s 
manner and under his licence, till about 1868, 
when Baxter’s own plates and blocks came into 
his hands, and he reprinted from them. Hence 
there are two groups of Le Blond nineteenth 
century prints, those which are Le Blond’s own, 
about thirty-two in number, mostly ovals, and 
those printed from Baxter’s plates and blocks, 
and not as satisfactory. Le Blond himself 
executed an important picture of a Highland 
lake, some landscapes, called “In the North of 
Scotland,’”’ ‘‘Galway Peasants,’ ‘ Forget-me- 
nots,” ‘‘ Virginia Water,’ ‘The Heather,’ and 
others, large-sized prints as a rule, although 
there are also some small ones; and then, after 
1868, he printed what are known as Le Blond- 
Baxters. Baxter’s plates, which bore his signa- 
ture in the body, had the signature erased when 
Le Blond printed from them, but it is not abso- 
lutely certain that this always took place. There 
are a few prints that bear Baxter’s signature 
only, but are clearly the work of Le Blond, 
because they are colder. and less brilliant in 
effect than they would have been if they had 
been Baxter's. 

Then, there are many Le Blond prints that 


PRINTS BY LE BLOND 121 


bear Le Blond’s own name, and there are, un- 
fortunately, in the market a great many Le Blond 
prints in which Le Blond’s own name has been 
cut off, in order that the print should be passed 
as one of. those by Baxter. The cutting-off of the 
signature alters the prints in size, and it is generally 
the size that enables the expert to know whether 
it is a damaged Le Blond print that is before him 
or a genuine work by Baxter. There are even 
still more clever forgeries, because in some cases, 
where Baxter’s signature is rather high up in the 
front, as for example in two which Mr. Lewis 
refers to, “‘ The Third Day He Rose Again ”’ and 
“Little Red Riding-hood ’”’ ; it was impossible to 
remove the signature without destroying the print, 
and the signature was carefully coloured over by 
hand, so that the print might pass off as one it 
Baxter. 

Of the two issues of one of Baxter’s most 
beautiful prints, “ The Bride,” the second plate 
passed into the hands of Le Blond, and was issued 
by him with his signature. It isa plate 5” x 33”. 
He also issued ‘The Exterior of the Crystal 
Palace,” two Australian. scenes, ‘‘ News from 
Home,” and ‘“‘ News from Australia,’ ‘ The 
Charge of the British Troops on the Road to 
Windlesham,”’ the portrait of the Prince of Wales, 
and one of the Princess Royal, Crown Princess 
of Prussia; a picture of Jenny Lind, called 
“The Daughter of the Regiment’; the Emperor 


122 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Napoleon I, the Duke of Wellington, Napoleon III, 
the Empress Eugénie, ‘‘ The Nativity ’’ and other 
religious scenes, ‘‘ The Fruit Girl of the Alps,” 
“The Ascent of Mont Blanc,” “‘ Returning from 
Prayer,’ “‘ The Circassian Lady at the Bath,” 
“The Mountain Stream,’ ‘‘ The Day before 
Marriage,’ ‘“‘ Summer,” and various others. 

In The Bazaar for January 21st, 1898, there is 
a catalogue of the prints that Le Blond made 
from Baxter plates, but this cannot be taken as 
absolutely authoritative, although it is a work of 
importance, because it is declared by some of the 
best collectors to include certain prints which 
were never issued at all. The standard work on 
the subject is that by Mr. C. T. C. Lewis, 1920. 

Le Blond’s work when he printed from Baxter's 
plates is not nearly so good as was Baxter’s. The 
prints are often slightly out of register. The 
complexions of the faces are not pleasing in some 
cases ; they are far too white, having hardly any 
carnation about them. In others they are a 
great deal too ruddy, almost of the colour of 
brick dust. In some instances the colour over 
the lips is practically, or even entirely missing, 
and there is an air of an unfinished print about 
the result, as though the printer had been in too 
much of a hurry to finish all the details. The 
ribbons are often lacking in colour, as for example 
the one on the Duke of Wellington’s portrait, which 
is of a poor, nondescript appearance. Le Blond 


PRINTS BY LE BLOND 123 


never seems to have been able to give all the care 
to the printing that Baxter himself lavished upon 
his plates, so that a connoisseur can generally 
detect, almost in a moment, a real Baxter print 
froma Le Blondreprint. There are some instances 
where the Baxter print is a rare thing, and the 
Le Blond can often be found; take for example 
the one of the Princess Royal. The Baxter 
print, on its original mount, is worth five or six 
pounds at least, the Le Blond not more than 
as many shillings. It is easy to detect the differ- 
ence, because in the Baxter print the jewels of 
the pendant and ear-rings are not coloured; in 
the Le Blond they are, and the flesh carnations 
in the Le Blond are of an unpleasant red, more 
like the colour of brick dust. 

In other cases it is not so easy. to determine. 
When no colour was used, Le Blond was almost 
Baxter’s equal. The Baxterotype of “It is 
Finished,”’ which is taken from Vandyck’s “ Cruci- 
fixion,”’ is to be found both printed by Baxter 
and Le Blond, and Le Blond’s is practically as 
good as is Baxter’s. In another one, called “ The 
Saviour,’ it is said that Le Blond omitted to 
use one of the blocks, with the result that there 
is, to use Mr. Lewis’s phrase, “a chalky look” 
about “ the high lights,’ and in the well-known 
Baxterotype called “ The Slaves,” published in 
1853, the Baxter print has an ivory-like exquisite 
surface, and is worth about four or five pounds ; 


124 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


the Le Blond is coarser, and not worth nearly as 
much. I would not, however, condemn in whole- 
sale fashion all the Le Blond prints. One called 
“ The Cornfield ’’ is a beautiful thing. The Ovals, 
too, are wonderful, notably “‘May Day” and 
“Fifth of November.” ‘‘Windsor Castle” is 
also a fine thing, and so are “ Blowing Bubbles,” 
“Wedding Day,” “The Ferry,” “ Snowballing,”’ 
“Lake Lucerne,” and ‘‘On the Water.” ‘‘ The 
Day before Marriage’’ is almost as well in its 
print by Le Blond as it is in its print by Baxter. 
Both were done from the same plate. ‘‘ The 
Lovers’ Letterbox ”’ is another good Le Blond, and 
the two prints called ‘‘Summer’”’ are both of them 
excellent examples of Le Blond’s work. The 
original printing by Baxter of the large “‘ Summer ”’ 
has greater depth of colour and finish, and on 
the sign of the inn there is an inscription, but 
Le Blond omits the inscription. In that case, 
Le Blond’s signature is very high up, and this is 
one where his name is often found coloured over, 
in order that the print should be passed off as a 
Baxter. It need not have happened in this case, 
because the print is a good one and rare. Both that 
and the small ‘“‘ Summer,” in good condition, are 
worth obtaining. 

Le Blond at his best was really er His 
“ Bride” is a beautiful piece of work, and several 
of his portraits are thoroughly good and attractive. 
At his worst he was bad, and the print of the 


PRINTS BY LE BLOND 125 


“ Nativity,’ which is one of Baxter’s best, is 
in Le Blond’s hands one of the worst, but some 
of Le Blond’s earlier prints of the Royal Family 
are beautiful pieces of execution, and are well 
worth trying to obtain. It will not be easy to 
get them, because really fine Le Blonds are 
almost as rare as fine Baxters. 

There are thirty of Baxter’s unsigned plates 
from which Le Blond printed, but only three of 
them are really important: ‘‘ The Fruit Girl of 
the Alps,’ “‘ The Reconciliation’? and ‘ The 
Slaves,’ and in these Le Blond was nearly Bax- 
ter’s equal, and the pictures are good. There 
are three lithographs in colour that belong to 
Le Blond’s work: “‘ Hollyhocks,”’ “‘ The Gardener’s 
Shed” and “ Lucerne,’ and a collector is very 
glad to get hold of them. 

On the whole, the opinion of collectors is that 
Le Blond was not as conscientious a man as 
Baxter, but in some cases it was not his fault 
that the pictures were not as good as Baxter's, 
because he did not succeed in getting hold of all 
the necessary blocks. 

Some prints are found with both Baxter’s name 
and Le Blond’s, Baxter’s name appearing on the 
margin and Le Blond’s on the body of the plate, 
and in these it was expected that the print would 
be mounted and the plate margin cut off. They 
are precious, and collectors are eager to get them. 

In my chapter on Baxter prints I referred to 


126 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


- the fact that they faded, and must not be ex- 
posed to light. This precaution needs emphasis 
with regard to Le Blond, as his prints fade even 
more rapidly than do those of Baxter, and as 
they were originally not as good, there is more 
in the fact than. in a Baxter print. In consequence, 
the collector of Le Blond’s prints has to be very 
scrupulous, more punctilious, than the collector 
of Baxter’s. He also has to be careful that the 
prints he wants are complete, that they have 
not been trimmed, that they are not those where 
the signatures have been altered, and that, if 
possible, they should have margins. I have 
found some collectors of Le Blond prints who 
actually prefer them to Baxter’s, so interested 
have they become in their collection. They 
tell me that there are more varieties in Le Blond’s 
than in Baxter’s—a cool look about the colouring, 
which appeals to them more than the brilliance 
of Baxter prints, and that they look better when 
they are framed, and are not so obtrusive on the 
wall. Personally, this is not my opinion, but I 
agree that many of Le Blond’s prints are delight- 
ful and I am quite sure they are worth collecting, 
because they are gradually becoming more and 
more rare. Moreover collecting tends to push 
the price up, and as the supply is a limited one, 
collectors are advised to take the matter in 
hand and to buy Le Blonds in view of what will 
certainly be a rising market. | 


CHAPTER XVII 


_ OLD WEDGWOOD 


T is pleasant to find that English con- 
I noisseurs are again beginning to collect 
Wedgwood ware. Josiah Wedgwood, the 
potter, was one of the very few original geniuses 
which England has produced, and it is fitting 
that the beautiful ware for which he was respon- 
sible should again occupy the position for which 
it is so suitable. The Jasper ware that Wedgwood 
used was a genuine discovery, his use of sulphate 
of barium and a small proportion of the carbonate 
resulting in a ware which is unique and of 
extraordinary merit, and when on this coloured 
ware he spread his reliefs in white in ex- 
quisite form, he produced one of the most 
beautiful things that English potters have ever 
conceived. 

A connoisseur recognises old Wedgwood ware 
by his fingers even more than by his eyes. There 
is what is known as the “ baby-skin”’ feel about 
the work made in Josiah’s own time, which has 
never been counterfeited, and, although the 
present firm have the old models, and turn out 
very beautiful things, there is yet that marked 


127 


128 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


divergence in texture between their products 
and those of the great founder of their firm. 

Few things are more lovely than the little 

cameos, tablets and medals that Wedgwood 
produced: the scent-bottles, étuis, chatelaine 
mounts, bell-handles, opera-glasses, vases, boxes, 
and above all, the portrait medallions ranging 
from tiny things, not much larger than one’s 
thumb-nail, up to large ovals. Whether they 
be in green, lavender or blue, they are equally 
beautiful, and if framed and mounted, as they 
were in the old days, with cut steel work, they 
acquire an increased beauty. 
- Moreover the Wedgwood collector will not 
confine his attention solely to objects made in the 
jasper ware; he will have fine. examples of black 
basalt, which also has a miraculous texture, and 
vases, columns and busts of this material will 
adorn his cabinets, and he will add to them 
examples of the cream ware which Wedgwood 
introduced in 1763, the granite, the agate, the 
tortoiseshell, the deep red of the terra-cotta 
wares, all of which add charm and variety to a 
cabinet. 

There are, it is said, to be found somewhere in 
England a few odd pieces of that wonderful service 
which Wedgwood made for Catherine II in 1774. 
There are one or two plates, belonging to the 
Wedgwoods themselves, to be seen in their 
museum ; there is a bit in the Mayer collection in 





*“PEGASUS’”’ VASE, BLUE JASPER, WITH SUBJECT OF APOLLO AND THE 
MUSES, MODELLED BY FLAXMAN FOR JOSIAH WEDGWOOD. 
HEIGHT, 16 INCHES. 


I 
} 





OLD WEDGWOOD 129 


Liverpool, but some of the discarded plates have 
yet to be found; they bear the emblem of the 
green frog, and the service itself has represented 
upon it all the important buildings of England 
from north to south. I was responsible for its 
re-discovery in Russia, went there to see it and 
wrote a big book about it. JI wonder what 
happened to it when the recent disturbances in 
Russia took place ? 

Fortunately, Wedgwood was not only a practical 
potter (he began throwing his own vases in 1759), 
but also an able chemist, and he gathered about 
him wonderful helpers, such as Tassie, Hackwood, 
Gossett and Flaxman, and was assisted by an 
almost perfect partner in Bentley. There are 
missing, by the way, a great many of Bentley's 
letters which Wedgwood cherished very dearly, 
and which he had bound up, but which seem to 
have disappeared altogether. 

The partnership was an ideal one. Wedgwood 
was so successful, because he was so enthusiastic, 
and devoted himself heart and soul to producing. 
the very best that he possibly could, sparing no 
pains and no trouble in carrying out the details 
of his pottery. 

How well I remember, some years ago, coming 
upon a little collection of cameos and medallions 
that had been preserved by the descendants of a 
man who worked at the factory, and who had put 


aside, with loving enthusiasm, exquisite examples 
I 


130 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


of the jasper ware. They had a grace of their own 
which has never since been equalled. 

Wedgwood was particularly fortunate in enlist- 
ing the sympathy of Flaxman, whose perfect 
draughtsmanship and marvellous classical know- 
ledge resulted in such beautiful scenes as the 
‘“ Bacchanalian Boys,’’ the ‘‘ Marriage of Cupid and 
Psyche,” “‘ Blind Man’s Buff,’ “ Apollo with the 
Muses,”’ and many similar scenes, and whose 
skill was responsible for the borders of festoons, 
leaves and swags which adorn the vases, and 
for the shell shapes and beautiful handles that 
appear on many of the pieces of his dinner 
ware. 

The present firm has the great advantage of 
having taken particular care of its old designs, 
plates and patterns, so as to be able to revive 
them, and when, some years ago, I examined 
the Russian dinner service, which had been lost 
sight of for nearly a hundred years, it was 
possible for the present firm to replace broken 
handles, knobs and ornaments from the original 
designs, and so make some of the damaged pieces 
once more perfect. 

Gradually, Wedgwood ware is creeping up again 
in value. For a while, it was under a cloud. 
Now, its charm is being recognised, and as the 
supply of choice pieces is very limited, collectors 
can be strongly recommended (especially those 
with patriotic sympathies) to start collecting 


OLD WEDGWOOD 131 


Wedgwood ware, with a sure sense of joy and a 
certainty of recompense. 

Needless to say, Wedgwood ware was often 
copied, especially by the potters of his own 
period and shortly after his decease. Such men 
as Turner and Adams obtained some of Wedg- 
wood's best productions, and set themselves to 
copy them, resulting very often in quite excellent 
pieces of ware, presenting very close resemblances, 
at first glance, to Wedgwood, but differing 
altogether in feel and sharp cut from the original. 
Sometimes these pieces bore the names of the 
plagiarists, and may be collected for their own 
sake, but other forgers were much more unscru- 
pulous, and a man named Palmer, for example, 
was thoroughly unscrupulous, because he not only 
tried to copy Wedgwood’s ware, but forged the 
name at the bottom of it, and there were two other 
workers, Neale and Mayer, who were almost as 
bad. Moreover, some of the medallions were 
copied at Sévres, but collectors will soon know 
how to identify them, as the ware is really quite 
different. 

It will be necessary for the collector to acquaint 
himself with the way in which the Wedgwood 
ware is marked, in order that he may distinguish 
old Wedgwood from that which has lately been 
made. The present firm is very careful in 
rendering it quite clear that their work is their 
own manufacture, and never attempts to pretend 


132 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


that what they have produced is old work. If 
the collector gets hold of any of the medallions, 
especially of the smaller ones, he may be recom- 
mended not to exhibit them in too large a quantity, 
but to put them singly, where they obtain their 
best effect. If inlaid on étuis or bonbonniéres, 
tea-caddies, patch-boxes or chatelaines, they look 
far better than they do if merely exhibited in a 
glass case, and these and pieces of jewellery 
and ornament mounted with Wedgwood cameos 
are in the greatest demand amongst skilled 
collectors. 

The cream ware made at Leeds is often con- 
fused with Wedgwood cream ware, but Wedgwood 
is marked, and Leeds very seldom bears the mark. 
Above all, Wedgwood ware is extraordinarily 
light, and the mere action of lifting a piece from 
the cabinet will often tell a connoisseur whether 
he is handling a genuine piece or not. | 

One of the wonderful collections was that 
formed by the late Lord Tweedmouth. It was 
offered for sale in 1905, and a catalogue was got 
up by Mr. Rathbone, when suddenly it was all 
withdrawn, to the disappointment of the Wedg- 
wood collectors of the day. It included some 
splendid medallions and cameos, but amongst its 
greatest treasures were some of the wax models 
from which Wedgwood made his ware. It had 
also two of the wonderful Portland vases, perhaps 
the greatest things that Wedgwood ever made, the 


OLD WEDGWOOD 133 


most perfect reproduction of the famous glass 
Barberini vase, which is generally known from 
having belonged to the Duchess of Portland as 
the Portland Vase. This is the vase that was 
broken by a lunatic, and has now been carefully 
pieced together, and is one of the great treasures 
in the Gold Room of the British Museum. 

The Wedgwood is now in the Leverhulme 
museum at Port Sunlight. 


CHAPTER XVIII - 
DINANDERIE 


S the metal work which originated at 
A Dinant was bronze, and not brass, 


Dinanderie is a phrase that should only 
be applied to objects wrought in bronze, although 
it certainly has been used in later days in connec- 
tion with other metals, specially copper and 
brass. 

There were, for many generations, notable 
craftsmen who worked in bronze, and some of 
the very greatest pieces of metal work in Europe 
are in this material. One has only to think of 
the magnificent tomb of Maximilian in Innsbruck, 
with its gigantic figures of knights surrounding it, 
-and of the amazing shrine of St. Sebald in Nurem- 
berg, to recall two of the grandest examples of 
bronze work that Europe contains. 

All who have visited Italy and Spain will be 
familiar with the superb bronze decoration of the 
various cathedral doors, with the knockers and 
handles that adorn these doors, with the fonts 
and lecterns that are to be found inside the 
cathedrals, with the smaller objects intended for 
altar use, such as the boxes, reliquaries, altar 

134 


DINANDERIE 135 


crosses, censers, candlesticks and croziers, with 
the dragons that form the top ornaments of the 
spires, and with the bells which hang beneath 
them. Many of these are wrought with superb 
craftsmanship, and are objects of the highest 
value from an artistic point of view. 

It is not given to the modern collector to be 
able to obtain such objects as these. He can 
enjoy and appreciate them in their places, and 
he knows the wonderful work contained in many 
of the door panels and the exquisite beauty of 
the shrines and the reliquaries. Occasionally, 
however, he is able to obtain some of the smaller 
examples of fine bronze work, and there were two 
collectors in recent days—Mr. John Edward 
Taylor and Mr. William Newall—who were 
fortunate enough to gather within their grasp 
many wonderful examples of bronze work, and 
to give to their successors the joy of discovering 
that the objects which they had selected with wise 
discretion in early days had become enormously 
enhanced in value, and fetched very substantial 
sums. Quite recently a wonderful knocker in 
bronze, the work of the great Paduan bronze 
worker of the sixteenth century, Riccio, an 
object only eleven inches long, fetched two 
thousand five hundred guineas, and although this 
price was not equalled by other things in the 
same collection, yet there were many objects that 
Mr. Newall had brought together that fetched 


136 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


very high prices. A salt-cellar went for four 
hundred and forty guineas, some of the figures 
fetched from eight hundred to a thousand guineas 
apiece, a fountain realised one thousand eight 
hundred guineas, and a pair of gilt altar candle- 
sticks three hundred and forty guineas, and a 
fine inkstand two hundred and fifty guineas. 

Among Mr. Taylor’s collection there was one 
figure which fetched nearly seventeen hundred 
pounds, a German mortar that fetched six hundred, 
a single candlestick that fetched nearly sixteen 
hundred, an amazing inkstand, only ten inches 
high, which fetched £3,255, and many candle- 
sticks, figures and groups which went for very big 
prices indeed. The inkstand had been bought 
as recently as 1888 for £204 Ios., the other ink- 
stand came from the Spitzer collection in 1893, 
when it sold for seven hundred pounds, but each 
of these two items in Mr. Taylor’s sale realised 
over three thousand and this price was exceeded 
by some of the bronze figures, and many of the 
others came very close to it. 

More remarkable still, perhaps, was a pair of 
large andirons, of sixteenth century Venetian 
work, which have been traced in three different 
collections, where they fetched first of all about 
a hundred and eighty pounds, then about four 
hundred, and then about a thousand, selling in 
1912 for very nearly ten thousand. In the case of 
a pyx of copper gilt, there was very much the 


DINANDERIE 137 


same state of affairs. At one time it sold for a 
hundred pounds. In the Taylor collection it 
fetched three thousand two hundred and fifty-five, 
and a pair of candlesticks, far older, going back 
to the thirteenth century, sold as recently as 1892 
for eighty-two pounds, and a very few years later 
five hundred pounds was gladly given for them. 
To the collector who has some money to invest 
there are chances with regard to bronze things 
almost unequalled, but the greatest care is needed 
in purchase, because there are innumerable 
forgeries, and, moreover, the collector must be 
possessed of what the French call flair, in order 
to detect fine things at a glance. It is impossible 
for me, in these columns, to explain the difference 
between a genuine old bronze and a modern one. 
I have myself been taken in by what appeared 
to me to be a genuine bronze but which turned 
out to be imitation, and there are only a few men 
whose judgment can be relied upon with absolute 
certainty in such a determination, so clever are 
the modern forgeries. At the same time, there 
are few things more beautiful than a fine Italian 
bronze, with its exquisite surface, and the wonder- 
ful colour of what is called its patina, and there is 
hardly any field open to the collector who is 
possessed of a certain amount of money at his 
disposal, more interesting than the collecting of 
such objects, especially those that are Italian or 
French, in bronze or in bronze and enamel. 


138 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Smaller English collectors can derive a good 
deal of joy from objects of much less importance. 
There are bronze mortars yet to be found in 
curiosity shops worth careful examination and 
often worth purchase, and, to descend to lower 
levels still, there are objects in brass (such as 
a collection of candlesticks), and in copper, 
that are very decorative in the room, especially 
when set. against old oak, and are well 
worth acquiring. Few things light up a room 
better than brass and copper, and where set 
against black oak, dark paint or panelling, a 
group of treasures in brass, copper and bronze 
gives a luminous effect to what might otherwise 
be a dingy corner in a room and brightens up the 
whole effect of the place. Such a thing as a brass 
warming-pan, a skimmer, a bronze bell, a brass 
figure, a group of candlesticks, especially those 
with a broad circular saucer in the centre which 
protected the hand of the person who carried it 
from the hot grease, is a source of delight and a 
pleasure to look at. To some people it is almost 
a sacrilege to lacquer this sort of thing, but to 
those who have few opportunities of keeping 
them in order a coat of lacquer is an advantage 
and saves endless trouble and elbow-grease, and 
for those who do not scorn small returns the 
collection of old English candlesticks and mortars 
gives a pleasing opportunity. 

There is a steady and increasing demand for 


DINANDERIE 139 


objects in metal. Old candlesticks bought for a 
few shillings are often worth as many pounds ; 
but here again the collector must be on the alert, 
because the forger has been ahead and candle- 
sticks one sees on farm-house mantelpieces have 
often been placed there by a local dealer for the 
wayfarer to admire and eventually to purchase 
at a price wholly beyond their original value. 

For persons who wander about the country and 
visit all the old curiosity shops there is great joy 
in searching for pieces of Italian bronze and trying 
to detect them by means of their exquisite surface 
and their wonderful colour and, failing to obtain 
these, bringing home in triumph some bit of old 
English brass or copper work purchased perhaps 
for a very small sum, and tending to delight the 
eye in the room of the collector and eventually, 
if he sees fit, to yield him a handsome profit on his 
original investment. 

One of the greatest and ablest collectors of 
bronzes in modern time is Mr. J. P. Heseltine. 
His collection of Italian bronze figures now 
belonging to Mr. Alfred Spero, one of our cleverest 
young experts, is almost unrivalled and includes 
specimens of paramount importance. 


CHAPTER XIX 


AUTOGRAPHS 


HE collector of autographs has one special 
advantage over almost all other collec- 


tors; an advantage, by the way, that he 
shares with the collectors of illuminated MSS. 
Every item in his collection is unique. No man or 
woman is in the habit of writing two letters in 
exactly similar form. At the outset let me say 
that by the collector of autographs I do not mean 
the collector of bare signatures. Signatures are 
all very well in their way and are interesting, but — 
a signature cut from a letter has lost the larger 
part of its importance and has become little more 
than a curiosity. 

In one of the books on autographs there is a 
story of a person who presented to a collector a 
bunch of signatures of Samuel Pepys, the diarist, 
stating that, for convenience of handling, he had 
cut them off from the letters because he thought 
that collectors only cared for signatures. As 
signatures they were worth a few shillings, the 
complete letters would have been worth many 
_ pounds each, and if they had been interesting 
letters, a very large sum. 

140 


AUTOGRAPHS I4I 


There are circumstances, of course, where only 
signatures can be obtained. An old attendance 
book in connection with the Royal Society once 
came into the possession of an acquaintance of 
mine ; it was nothing more than signatures, but 
he unwisely cut all the book up and put the 
signatures into his album in groups. There again 
a mistake was made, because they would have 
been much more important all kept together in 
one book. Occasionally, on documents, there 
are only signatures, but even those are much 
better kept on the documents to which they 
belong than cut out for a collector’s album. But 
the real collector of autographs is not the 
autograph fiend who simply tries to obtain 
signatures, or purchase them, but the student 
who is on the look-out for complete letters or 
documents that have an historic or literary 
interest, and oftentimes there are treasures to be 
obtained. 

Just now the demand is for letters connected 
with literary people, notably poets. One single 
letter of John Keats sold, in 1909, in the Haber 
collection, for five hundred pounds. It was, of 
course, an exceedingly important and interesting 
letter, but it only cost Mr. Haber about thirty 
pounds; and other letters sold at the same sale, 
although not realising such a price as this one, 
showed considerable advances on the prices Mr. 
Haber had originally paid for them. The life of 


142 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Keats was short and so interesting that there will 
always be a great demand for his letters. 

Shelley’s letters are almost as rare. Even an 
autograph receipt signed by Shelley fetched 
fifteen pounds only a little while ago. 

Swinburne’s letters are rare, but autograph 
poems by Swinburne are a great deal more 
precious—the autograph of his poem “ East to 
West’ fetched about twenty pounds. An essay 
that he wrote on one of Shakespeare’s plays sold 
for twenty pounds; but some of his MSS. have 
fetched considerably more than that ; for example, 
in a recent catalogue there was a MS. essay 
written in defence of certain of his writings, only 
Six pages, priced at fifty-six pounds ; and another, 
written in conjunction with Rossetti, was worth 
a hundred pounds. 

Stevenson’s letters are very much in request 
amongst collectors, and only a few weeks ago 
several were sold at Christie’s for high prices, 
while for a MS. there was great competition and 
it fetched a very substantial figure, and it fell 
into the hands of an important American collector. 
There is always a steady demand for essays or 
poems by any of the noted English literary men 
of the eighteenth century, and as the supply is 
very limited, such prices are sure to increase 
year by year. 

Letters from Dickens and Thackeray also fetch 
substantial prices, while autographs concerning 


AUTOGRAPHS 143 


Dr. Johnson are most eagerly desired and generally 
find their way to the other side of the Atlantic 
into a very famous Johnsonian collection, about 
which there was issued last year a privately 
printed catalogue containing details of the greatest 
interest. For this particular collection there has 
been gathered up almost everything that has 
come into the market about Dr. Johnson or 
Boswell, together with a vast number of auto- 
graph letters of persons who are mentioned in 
Boswell’s ‘‘ Life of Johnson,’”’ or who came into 
contact with Johnson himself or who had any 
practical or intimate connection with him. 
Autograph collectors as a rule specialise, taking 
some particular period or person and endeavouring 
to collect everything relative to it. A favourite 
method of mounting autographs is to extra- 
illustrate some well-known book. Fanny Burney’s 
“Diary,” the “ Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds,’ 
the “ Life of Garrick,’’ Bryan’s ‘ Dictionary of 
Artists,’ and many similar works, are extended 
by collectors into numerous volumes by the 
addition of autograph letters written by persons 
referred to in their pages, accompanied in many 
cases by illustrations of the persons or of the 
scenes referred to in the volumes in question. 
Mounted up in this way autograph letters acquire 
very special interest. It is delightful to find 
in a volume about Lord Nelson some of his 
Original dispatches, several of his letters to Lady 


144 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Hamilton, perhaps a letter or two to his own 
daughter, and other correspondence concerning 
the great Admiral. 

I remember only some short time ago seeing a 
volume on Napoleon, containing many of his 
letters mounted inside it, together with his own 
drawings for the arrangement of his troops, com- 
munications to his marshals, some of his own 
personal letters, and two remarkable ones ad- 
dressed to the Empress Josephine. There are 
not many collectors who are in a position to- 
carry out work of this kind, and in some cases a 
collection is simply contained within the covers 
of a collector's album, but the great thing is to 
obtain interesting letters and characteristic ones. 

Some collectors specialise in the works of 
musicians. There was an amazing collection 
offered some time ago of autographs of Mendels- 
sohn: over two hundred letters, many MS. 
scores, and all kinds of relics relative to the 
musician had been all brought together with a 
great deal of loving care, and then, at the death 
of the owner, were put into the market. Here 
was an opportunity in this collection of having 
a vast amount of unpublished material relative to 
Mendelssohn. 

Some years ago I saw a beautiful letter from 
Cardinal Newman in which, at the request of a 
friend, he had written out the first verse of ‘‘ Lead, 
kindly Light.” This was a precious thing and 


AUTOGRAPHS 145 


was very highly valued by its owner. In a 
famous library in New York there is the original 
MS. of another hymn, “ Rock of Ages,’’ written 
out by Augustus Toplady, and, more important 
still, Heber’s original draft for “‘ From Greenland’s 
icy mountains,” written on the vestry paper of 
the church where the hymn was first sung. No 
one is surprised that there is great competition 
for documents of that sort and that collectors are 
glad to pay substantial prices for them. 

There is a great demand for autograph corre- 
spondence by William Penn, and perhaps an even 
greater demand for autograph letters by Washing- 
ton. There are several American collectors who 
strive to obtain a specimen of the handwriting of 
every one of the persons who signed the Declaration 
of Independence. Of that of one of the signers 
I believe it is impossible to get anything, and of 
another only one or two signatures are known ; 
but of several of them there are letters to be 
obtained, and these, of course, have a very special 
interest to the collector on the other side of the 
Atlantic. 

Then there are collectors who go very much 
farther back than the days of Penn and Washing- 
ton for their special treasures. Some time ago 
the most important letter written by Cardinal 
Pole came into the market and fetched, if I am 
not mistaken, nearly fifty pounds, and documents 
relating to his period are always in demand. 

K 


146 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Possibly, some day or the other, some of the long 
lost love-letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn 
may be recovered. They were sent out to Rome 
and some are still to be seen in the Vatican 
library, but no one knows for certain what has 
become of the best. It is very seldom that 
anything more than signatures of the Tudor 
Kings of England can be obtained. A few 
holograph letters of Queen Elizabeth are known, 
but as a rule the body of her letters was 
in someone else’s handwriting, and she only 
supplied the famous square signature with its 
elaborate flourishes, which is so well known. Hers 
was, perhaps, the most wonderful and striking 
signature of any of the English Sovereigns. 

Some writers alter their handwriting according 
to the period of their life. There were two 
distinct handwritings of Thackeray's. There are 
several very varying signatures of Charles Dickens. 
In 1830 there was no flourish under his name ; 
in 1831 a simple double flourish, which became 
more florid in the following year and increased in 
the number of strokes year by year, until; in 
1837, there were seven distinct loops underneath 
the signature. Then suddenly, in the next year, 
he altered the position of these loops, and instead 
of their being under the letter “C”’ and to the 
left of the signature, they all appear at the other 
end of the signature under the word “ Dickens,”’ 
and so they continued down to his decease, 


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AUTOGRAPHS 147 


although towards the latter part of his life he 
made them much more loosely, irregular, gradu- 
ally diminishing flourishes. Collectors need to 
know something of these peculiarities, because 
- sometimes letters by Dickens and Thackeray and 
men of that kind are forged, and the forger has to 
be detected. 

The study of forgeries is quite another subject. 
If I were to deal with the Ireland forgeries or 
the Chatterton forgeries, I should more than fill 
the space at my disposal. Autograph letters 
have been discovered in all kinds of curious 
places. There was a wonderful discovery of 
famous documents in a loft over a stable at 
Belvoir Castle. Some of the most important 
historical MSS. in England had been lost sight 
of, and were found in this place. Some wonderful 
documents were once found in a paper mill, 
whither they had been sent for destruction, and 
very often, in turning out family papers, bundles 
of letters have been discovered that had been 
quite overlooked, and which turned out to be of 
considerable value and high historical importance. 
Executors and others who have to wind up 
estates are bound to look very carefully through 
letters that are left behind, on the possible chance 
of there being something quite valuable amongst 
family papers. Sometimes it involves a great 
deal of work with very little results. I remember 
having to go through the papers of the lady for 


148 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


whom I was executor, and finding very little 
amongst hundreds of letters she had kept, but 
my search was eventually rewarded, and I was 
glad that I had waded through a mass of rubbish 
because later on I came upon some correspon- 
dence that was distinctly of importance. 


CHAPTER XX 


BLUE AND WHITE PORCELAIN 


ARDLY anything is so decorative in a 
house as Chinese porcelain of blue 


and white, especially when placed 
against dark walls or oak furniture, and yet, 
eddly enough, it had not been collected in serious 
fashion in England until after the middle of the 
nineteenth century. A pioneer in this direction 
was a Frenchman named Bracquemond, who 
began to collect it in 1856. In 1862 he persuaded 
a certain Frenchwoman, a Madame Desoye, to 
open a little shop for the sale of blue and white 
porcelain and Oriental prints in the Rue de 
Rivoli, and Whistler, the famous artist, was one 
of the earliest purchasers at that shop. He 
introduced the love of blue china to Rossetti, 
and from these two artists, helped as they were 
to obtain fine examples by Murray Marks, the 
famous dealer, who was far in advance of his 
times in respect to the appreciation of blue 
porcelain, we owe the existence of a desire to 
collect such porcelain. 
At first a great deal of it was wrongly dated. 
It was declared to be the production of the 
149 


150 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


fifteenth century, instead of the seventeenth 
century, and even now there are many persons 
who, seeing the date mark upon Chinese porcelain 
that belongs to the period of about 1465 to 1487, 
believe that this date mark corresponds with the 
period at which the porcelain was made. The 
Chinese have always, however, been amazing 
people for counterfeiting, and thinking that the 
European customer would value their commodity 
for the same quality that made it so esteemed in 
China, dated it back a century or so. 
_ Now we know better than the early collectors, 
and we understand that the beautiful vases 
decorated with the prunus blossom, generally 
called the hawthorn, although it really represents 
the bloom of the methua, or winter-blooming plum- — 
tree, belong to the reign of K’ang-Hsi (1662- 
1722) and not to that of Chia-Ching (1522-1566). 
It is not, by the way, always recognised that 
the decoration of these so-called hawthorn ginger- 
jars conveyed a dainty allegory concerning the 
coming of spring. The blue which covered the 
surface of the jar represents the cracking of the 
ice, and the blossom is that which opens out as 
the ice begins to pass away, and spring is in view. 
These beautiful jars were used for the convey- 
ance of costly gifts of tea or other delicacies 
intended for the beginning of the New Year. 
The jar from the Huth collection, for which 
Mr. Huth is said to have given under a hundred 





A SPLENDID BLUE AND WHITE GINGER JAR DECORATED 
WITH THE PRuUNuUS BLOSSOM. 





BLUE AND WHITE PORCELAIN § 151 


pounds, sold at his sale for £5,900, the record 
price of a jar of that kind. It was of course 
the very finest that had ever come into the 
market, although it has been stated by collectors 
that there are still two finer ones to be found 
in the possession of a Dutch family in Friesland, 
who imported them generations ago, and have 
preserved them ever since. 

An almost equally beautiful jar came to the 
British Museum from the Salting collection, and 
another one, also in the same museum, was 
bought for a price under three hundred pounds, 
and, in the eyes of some connoisseurs, rivalled the 
superb example from the Huth collection. The 
Huth vase was at one time in the possession of 
Mr. Murray Marks, and several of the best of 
these jars, that are now in various great col- 
lections, passed through the hands of this eminent 
and well-known dealer. 

He was responsible also for the name “ Mussul- 
man blue,’ or ‘‘ Mahometan blue,’ and is said 
to have suggested, in conversation with Dr. 
Bushell, that having discovered that the original 
Chinese name of the blue indicated that its origin 
was outside China, this was the suitable word 
to apply to it, and collectors have adopted it 
accordingly. 

There are numbers of hawthorn ginger-jars all 
over the country, and the majority of them are 
quite unimportant. They are in the windows 


152 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


of various dealers in tea, and are often to be 
seen in ordinary houses. The Chinese soon found 
out what a demand there was for a jar of this 
particular colour, and they set to work to produce 
scores of them for the market. Still, there are 
chances for a collector, amongst all this variety, 
and the possessions of some of the early collectors 
have never yet come into the market, so that 
jars as fine as any of those in the museums may 
even yet be discovered. 

The ginger-jars are not the only famous pieces 
of blue. There are tall vases in sets of three or 
five. There are the long-necked vases known as 
sprinklers. There are the plates which bear 
upon them designs representing tall and graceful 
Chinese ladies, which the Dutch traders called | 
“Lange Lijsen,’’ and which Whistler para- 
phrased into “‘ Long Elizas’”’ ; and there are cups 
and saucers, pots and jars, and all kinds of other 
pieces that belong to quite good periods, and are 
beautiful in decoration. 

The Dutch were the people who first of all 
introduced them into Europe, and long before 
the English or the French appreciated their 
beauty, Dutch merchants understood the charm 
of blue and coloured Oriental ware, and gave 
substantial prices for the finest pieces. 

It is to the work of Dr. Bushell, who for nearly 
a quarter of a century was attached to the British 
Legation at Pekin, that we owe the credit of 


BLUE AND WHITE PORCELAIN 153 


clearing up the subject of the dating of Chinese 
porcelain, and he was the first person who wrote 
about it with authority, and cleared away a 
great many of the errors which had hitherto 
surrounded its history. His book was under- 
taken at the request of that energetic collector, 
Mr. W. T. Walters of Baltimore, and it was 
responsible for readjusting the whole subject of 
blue and white porcelain, and of the coloured 
porcelain that was almost equally important, 
and in the eyes of some connoisseurs even more 
decorative. | He 

The earliest piece of Oriental porcelain that we 
have in England can be seen in New College. 
It is a bowl of what is known as celadon green, 
and used to belong to Archbishop Warham (1504- 
1532). It is mounted in wonderful silver gilt 
work, and there are other mounted pieces to be 
seen in different English museums and country 
houses, although not quite so old or important 
as this. Chinese porcelain mounted in Elizabethan 
silver is of course exceedingly rare and very 
precious, and the aim of every great collector is 
to obtain a specimen of it. 

The finest collection of blue and white porcelain 
that was ever brought together was that which 
belonged to Mr. Pierpont Morgan, and was sold 
after his death for £800,000 to Messrs. Duveen. 
It embraced the Marston-Perry and the Gar- 
land collections, and contained one superb vase, 


154 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


decorated with the prunus blossom in red on a 
black ground, and at the time of its purchase the 
only example known of this particular design. 
The Garland collection had sold for £120,000, 
and Mr. Morgan had bought it all, and added 
it to what he already possessed. There are other 
great collections. 

Lord Leverhulme has splendid pieces, both in 
London and at his museum ; there are magnificent 
pieces belonging to the Metropolitan Museum of 
New York, some of the finest of which came from 
the Altmann collection ; there were the Lee and 
the Bennett collections, that which belonged to 
Judge Gary ; and some very fine pieces, including 
many in what is called powder-blue, were once the 
property of Mr. G. L. Bevan, who happened to be 
an excellent judge of porcelains. The Salting 
collection added some splendid pieces to the 
possessions of the British nation, and at South 
Kensington, in Dresden, and in New York, this 
fascinating ware can be studied with great advan- 
tage, because in these museums are some of the 
best examples of it that exist in the world. 


CHAPTER XXI 


OLD DEEDS 


T has been a habit amongst lawyers in 
I _ recent times that, when purchases are made 
of land, only the deeds that immediately 
concern the title are handed over, and early ones, 
unnecessary to quote in the abstract of the title, 
are considered as of small importance. They 
are sometimes retained in the lawyer’s office for a 
while, and then sold, or are even discarded at the 
time. Such a course is exceedingly unsatisfactory 
from the point of view of the antiquary. There 
are some people who care nothing for the history 
of the land which they ‘possess, and only desire 
that their possession of it should be secure, 
but there are many others keenly interested in 
everything that concerns the past story of 
land, and in the people who originally possessed 
it, and to them these deeds are of high 
importance. 

The result of such a course has been that a 
number of parchments, from time to time, have 
come into the market, and moreover, large 
quantities of documents have been turned out of 
muniment rooms by persons who knew nothing 

155 


156 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


of the value of the deeds they handled, and were 
quite unable to peruse them. 

Collectors have added a new hobby, that of 
the acquisition of interesting and important deeds, 
and the price for such treasures has begun to 
mount to quite a substantial figure. 

Deeds that have upon them the portrait of the 
Sovereign, with elaborate decorated borders, 
and with the seals appended therefrom, have a 
double interest. They are beautiful objects in 
themselves, and are generally also of some notable 
value from the standpoint of history. I know of 
one billiard-room splendidly decorated by a whole 
series of framed deeds which hang upon its walls, 
all beautifully written and elaborately illuminated, 
constituting a unique form of ornamentation. 

Some collectors are only attracted by the seals, 
and for fine impressions of early Royal seals are 
prepared to pay substantial prices, whether the 
document to which the seal is attached is a 
notable one or not. Others collect deeds with 
signatures, and a document signed by Queen 
Elizabeth is always a precious thing. Her big, 
square, bold signature is very noticeable, and 
eminently characteristic of its writer. 

Some landowners, having had their attention 
drawn to the early deeds they possess, have 
framed the documents, and have got an archivist 
to write a short account of each deed, to attach 
to the frame, and then have hung these deeds 


OLD DEEDS 157 


in passages or corridors. In this way they have 
provided, not only a method of decoration, but 
have enabled the treasures that have borne the 
signatures of their ancestors and their Sovereigns 
to be appreciated by all who can see them. 

All kinds of deeds have been turned out of 
record-rooms and lawyers’ offices, and have come 
into the market. There have been Court Rolls, 
from various manors, which easily sell for from 
ten to twenty pounds apiece, and much smaller 
ones are of less value. They are full of information 
respecting the tenants of the manors. Marriage 
settlements have also been discarded, and when 
sealed and signed by important people are quite 
precious things. Old leases very often bear the 
autographs of historic personages. For example, 
I saw some a few days ago, signed by the Arch- 
bishops of Canterbury, Whitgift, Abbot, Laud, 
-Juxon, Sheldon and Sancroft. Ancient charters 
often bear important seals, and the earlier they 
are in date, the more precious they are to a col- 
lector. A beautiful little charter of Henry III, 
with a delightfully sharp seal three inches long, 
sold for about ten pounds recently ; a document 
of James II for a very similar amount. 

Papal Bulls often occur amongst the family 
documents, and have been placed upon the market, 
and these are decorative objects, and generally 
give interesting information concerning religious 
difficulties in families, as, for example, marriages 


188 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


contrary to canon law, owing to the relations of 
the two persons as regards consanguinity, or the 
masses to be said at particular apt: in certain 
churches. 

Quaker marriage settlements are attractive 
things, because often they bear very many 
signatures, and those connected with some of the 
early watchmakers of the eighteenth century are 
adorned at times by the signatures of royal 
personages and ambassadors of high importance, 
who were present on these occasions. 

There have been several notable documents 
sold recently in America; a highway grant under 
the Great Seal of Elizabeth sold for a very sub- 
stantial sum, and a deed of exchange relating to 
certain property, which bore the signatures of 
William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and Sir Walter 
Mildmay, with the Queen’s own signature, and 
possessing a splendid example of her first Great 
Seal, was a treasure for which there was con- 
siderable competition. 

Deeds signed by Edward VI are unusually 
precious. It will be remembered that he came 
to the throne when he was only ten years old, and 
at first many of the Royal letters patent were 
signed by the entire Council of Regency, including 
Cranmer, the Duke of Somerset, the Lord High 
Admiral, Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, and others, 
and notable deeds not only bear the Great Seal, 
but also the King’s Royal sign manual ; a docu- 


OLD DEEDS 159 


ment signed in this way is worth about two 
hundred pounds, and it is very seldom that such 
a thing comes into the market. 

Sometimes deeds contain maps of property 
which are ornamental, but which also may be of 
importance when the property changes hands, 
concerning its boundaries, and very often there 
are illuminated coats of arms upon ancient deeds, 
carefully prepared, and at times BronS with 
beautiful colour. 

Sometimes, amongst the old parchments, there 
are family pedigrees, and these are always 
precious. There are collectors ready to purchase 
them, especially those who are connected in any 
degree, however remote, with the family whose 
pedigree has been prepared, and here, again, our 
American cousins take great interest in such 
matters, and are prepared to bid substantially for 
any ancient pedigrees. It is seldom advisable to 
turn boxes of deeds into the market until they 
have been very carefully examined, because even 
if they have no importance with regard to property 
which perchance has passed away from the family, 
there is antiquarian interest in such parchments, 
and very frequently an esthetic charm in the 
membranes, quite apart from their archeological 
value. There are many country houses in England 
where there are still masses of old documents, 
some of the highest possible archeological im- 
portance, and yet I heard only within the last few 


160 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


months of ten boxes of old deeds, regarded as of 
no value at all, being turned out of a country 
house, and sold as waste paper at five shillings a 
box. One tiny deed out of one of these boxes 
belonged to the late thirteenth century, and was 
sold almost immediately for £25—ten times the 
amount that had been obtained for the whole lot 
of boxes. 


CHAPTER XXII 


OLD ENGLISH IRONWORK 


a REVIOUS to the time of Lady Dorothy 
Pp Nevill few persons seem to have made 
a really careful study of the history of 
old English domestic ironwork. Lady Dorothy, 
whom I knew quite well, spent a considerable 
part of her life in Sussex, and she found the 
cottages in the villages round about her full of 
interesting pieces of ironwork, so she started 
making a collection. There were fire-dogs and 
fire-backs, rush-holders, tongs, candlesticks, hooks 
and chains for the suspension of large pots, and 
various other pieces of domestic work which were 
specially interesting, because many of them had 
been produced close to where she purchased them. 
There was in early days a large iron-producing 
district in Sussex, near Heathfield. There were 
many furnaces, which at one time kept half the 
population in full employ, and many Sussex 
families owed their fortunes to these ironworks. 
Notably amongst these families Lady Dorothy 
refers to a family named Fuller. 
Hammerponds still exist in many parts of 


Surrey and Sussex and give their names to villages, 
L 161 


162 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


e.g. Abinger Hammer, and they have in many 
instances clear streams full of trout flowing 
out of them. The ironworks continued in force 
down to 1825, the last furnace in Sussex, Ash- 
burnham Furnace, having been blown out in that 
year, after having steadily been worked by Lord 
Ashburnham up to that time, and when this 
furnace was destroyed it was said that its iron 
was among the very best that had ever been 
produced in the world. : 

Sussex ironwork was very highly esteemed, 
and it is said that the railings surrounding St. 
Paul’s Cathedral, part of which are still in 
existence, were of Sussex workmanship. 

All kinds of things that later on were made of 
different materials were at one time produced in 
iron, sO much so that there are even in some of 
the Sussex graveyards iron gravestones, or monu- — 
ments as they ought more strictly to be called. 

When Lady Dorothy began to collect she was 
told that what she was buying was “absolute 
rubbish’ ; she herself says soin one of her books, 
and I have often heard her say how much she 
was laughed at for collecting the local domestic 
implements. Presently, when she had got quite 
a good collection together, Sir Purdon Clarke 
pleaded that it might be transferred to the Victoria 
and Albert Museum, and there her collection still 
remains, and from the time that she began buying 
prices have gone up steadily. She concerned 


OLD ENGLISH IRONWORK 163 


herself mainly with the small pieces, but 
occasionally she bought larger ones; she had 
portions of balconies, iron lamp stands, one or 
two delightful gates, a very charming fender, a 
pendent lamp, and several other pieces that were 
quite attractive. Some of the collectors who have 
followed her, and who had more space at their 
command than she possessed, have bought even 
larger pieces of fine ironwork; for instance, one 
collector that I know has three splendid pairs of 
park gates, all of the most beautiful wrought 
foliage ironwork, the result of the ability of some 
amazingly clever craftsman. 

There was an interesting exhibition of art metal 
work in May, 1898, which drew fresh attention to 
the importance of forging iron in artistic fashion, 
and which also was concerned with the carving and 
chasing of iron and steel, the manufacture of fine 
steel locks and keys, and embossing and beating 
brass and copper work. It attracted a great deal 
of attention, and on examination of the exhibits 
people could see that hardly any craft in the 
world can compete with the work of a good 
blacksmith. Alertness, touch and individuality 
are all fostered and are actually incorporated in 
the mind of a man who is to be a good metal- 
worker. The sturdy independence and resource- 
fulness of a smith are a delight to all who come 
into contact with him. 3 

It is rather sad to compare modern metal work 


164 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


with old work. Look, for example, on the 
handles that appear on various pieces of modern 
oak furniture. They are often of brass or bronze, 
which is out of place, and if they are of iron are 
merely mechanically produced things, instead of 
the hand-wrought drops, rings and handles which 
used to be made in earlier and simpler days. The 
same thing applies to larger pieces of decoration, 
and collectors who are fortunate enough to get 
together pieces of good English ironwork, however 
small they be, will find in them a charm, by reason 
of their simplicity and artistic merit, that is 
wholly lacking in a great deal of the mechanically 
produced modern work. In an East Anglian 
church there is a wonderful bracket which supports 
the cover of the font, and the local smith, whose — 
work it was, has allowed his fancy to run riot in 
the beautiful foliage decoration he has given in 
this piece of ironwork. 

Fortunately, greater attention has been given 
to preserving good specimens of ironwork within 
the last few years than was the case in earlier 
times. In Victorian days beautiful old houses 
were pulled down and the railings, balconies and 
fanlights over the doors were all destroyed. 
Nowadays the London County Council is exceed- 
ingly particular about any such destruction in 
London, and transfers to its museum in Kingsland 
Road such of the fine pieces of the ironwork as do 
not find their way to the London Museum. At 


OLD ENGLISH IRONWORK 165 


either of these museums the connoisseur will find 
a good deal to delight him in the way of wrought 
ironwork, and will rejoice in the effort that is now 
being made to preserve it, to show the modern 
craftsman what was done in other days. 

Some of the pieces of domestic ironwork that 
collectors may find are a little puzzling at first 
glance. There is, for example, the pair of circles 
united by two crossbars on a stand, and sur- 
mounted by a ring, which is occasionally to be 
seen in old farm-houses, and which has a somewhat 
mysterious appearance. It was really a very 
simple thing, intended to receive clay pipes which 
had been smoked for a long time, and were then 
put into these two iron circles, and the piece of 
apparatus placed in the oven, surrounded by a 
wood fire, and the pipes, which were difficult in 
those days to obtain, were re-burned white as 
snow and brought out again for fresh use. I have 
seen these old pieces of iron brought into excellent 
service in the present day as door scrapers, and 
they are more picturesque than the ordinary 
scraper one can see on the doorstep of the modern 
house. | 

The rushlight holders were of various kinds ; 
some were quite small, to stand on a table, others 
had tall iron stems set in a block of wood, that 
they might be placed near to a chair by a reader's 
shoulder, so as to give him increased light. Some 
of them were altered, so that the handle part 


166 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


formed a sort of candlestick, and as the small 
rushlight gave place to a rough form of tallow 
candle, so the holder was altered in order that the 
tallow candle might be placed in it. 3 : 

Then there are the tinder boxes, which are often 
charming in their simple decoration, the rib on the 
top of the cover being easily made, and the one 
on the side of the box just suitable for the finger 
to hold it. The inside cover, with which the 
tinder was pressed, was often quite a pretty piece 
of metal work. 

Some of the ring handles, intended for entrance 
doors, and some of the iron latches for side doors, 
were exceedingly well made, charming pieces of 
smith’s work. The principal part of the latch, on 
which the thumb was pressed, was so cleverly 
arranged that the thumb fitted exactly into the 
cavity, and the curve had a pleasant effect, very 
different from the straight flat look of a modern 
latch. } | | A 
Then, again, the wrought-iron snaps of the 
lattice windows were often prettily made. At one 
cottage I went into I found that the latches of 
each window differed, and the ends of some of 
them were turned so as to bear some sort of 
resemblance to a bird, while others depicted a 
kind of flower, and the two latches in the principal 
room were curled up at the ends so cleverly that 
they represented tiny squirrels in wrought iron- 

work. 3 


OLD ENGLISH IRONWORK 167 


All these were made by the smith of the village, 
who was just allowed his own time to work out 
_ his own ideas. 

In the same house I was attracted by the 
beauty of what was called the “ peel,’ a large 
shovel with a very long handle, which was used 
for bringing the loaves out of the old-fashioned 
brick oven. The shovel was not a solid piece, 
such as one would have had in a modern spade or 
shovel, it was perforated by a very pretty design, 
representing a Tudor rose, with foliage and seeds, 
and the handle, instead of being perfectly straight 
and ugly, was forked at the end, and each of the 
two forks curved into a very pretty spiral. The 
blacksmith who had made it saw no reason why, 
in making an object that was for regular domestic 
use, he should not exercise his own personal skill 
upon it, and the result was a very pleasing thing, 
so good of its kind that it was quite worthy of 
being put away in the museum. 

Fire-dogs, of course, are sometimes cast and 
sometimes wrought. The wrought ones are 
generally very delightful, both in shape and in 
decoration. Some of the most beautiful things 
that were ever made by village blacksmiths were 
keys for cabinets, or for doors, or even the big 
keys that were used for churches. Sometimes 
they are perfectly simple bows, but even when 
that is the case they are sufficiently smooth not 
to injure the fingers. Sometimes the blacksmith 


168 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


had his own sweet will, and I have seen charm- 
ingly wrought keys in which the initial letter of 
the family appeared, or in which there was a 
rough representation of a coronet, or of some 
object which formed a well-known part of the 
shield, as, for example, a lamb, a bird, or a kind 
of dragon, and in one important house the front 
and the back door keys were wonderful pieces of 
wrought ironwork, in which there was a_ bold 
attempt to represent the family arms in the bow 
of the key. 

In Stuart times, locks and keys were re- 
garded as suitable presents. Lady Anne Clifford, 
Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery, 
kept a local smith in constant employ in making 
what were known as “ stock locks ’’—great, solid 
rectangular locks, intended to protect the front 
doors of important houses, and provided each 
with its big, heavy key. Sometimes these locks 
were put into oak coverings, and sometimes they 
were just left in the natural wrought iron case, ’ 
but in several instances, either on the keys or on 
the oak, she had her initials, “‘ A. P.’’ and the 
date, and then she made presents of these 
locks to those persons whom she desired to 
honour, and who were proud to have the fine 
wrought iron lock on their doors and to show 
that it was the gift of the great lady of the district, 
who was probably the landlord or the lady of 
the manor. There are several of these locks 


OLD ENGLISH IRONWORK 169 


still in existence. There is one at Rose Castle in 
Carlisle ; there are two or three in churches in 
Cumberland and Westmoreland, and several of 
the houses, including one charming residence 
called Colin Field, near Kendal, boast of the © 
presence of one of these substantial and important 
locks. 

One of the advantages of collecting ironwork is 
that many of the pieces can be brought into use. 
There is one house where, whenever I raise the 
knocker to announce my arrival, I covet the 
beautiful piece of English wrought ironwork that 
I see on: the door. 

There is another where the large handsome ring 
handles which issue from the mouth of some kind 
of mystic beast are equally delightful, and in a 
third there are three or four pairs of wrought iron 
tongs in the fire-place that are, every one of them, 
well worth examination. The largest would lift 
quite a big log, and its legs are curved so as to 
hold an awkward-shaped piece of wood, and it is 
finished in wonderful fashion with a strange 
dragon with a curly tail ornamenting each of its 
handles. The smallest of all, which was probably 
a pipe-lighter, and with which no doubt some 
small Sussex farmer picked up a piece of coal to 
light the tobacco in his pipe, is as dainty a bit of 
ironwork as one could wish to see. The two 
pieces to hold the lighted coal are two ivy leaves, 
cleverly wrought, veined and stemmed, very 


170 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


much like the actual leaf; but the smith never 
makes the mistake of preparing an actual copy, 
of forcing his ironwork to look exactly like the 
natural object he has before him. It resembles 
it; you can realise what was the motif for the 
work, but you do not find a scrupulous and 
absurd copy, but just a general and very charming 
effect. The intermediate pair of tongs has two 
strange hands, like the hands of some curious, 
angry monster, at its ends, with which the piece of 
coal is clasped, and there is a rough representation 
of a head in the middle where the legs of the tongs 
come together, and then of two more much smaller 
hands, which come out and form the handles of 
the tongs. The whole effect is curious and 
mysterious, but in taking hold of the piece of 
ironwork one realises how much of the spirit 
of the smith has gone into its manufacture, and 
how he delighted to produce something unusual 
and curious, and something that would show who 
had been the craftsman who had wrought it. 
For the same family a remarkable old box was 
made in the village for holding papers, and there 
again, the bands which clasped it are wrought 
into representations of the family crest, and the 
handles resemble stumps of a tree with foliage 
on them, very cleverly wrought, and very pleasing 
in effect. 

Even those persons who are unable to collect 
ironwork would do well to look at it and to 


OLD ENGLISH IRONWORK 171 


appreciate the charm of it, for, in the present 
days of rapid and mechanical production, there is 
hardly any good smith-work being made, and 
then only for the occasional few who admire it, 
and who are in a position to commission its 
execution. May one recall the delightful lines of 
Morris in “ Sigurd the Volsung ’”’: 
“The hammer and fashioning iron 
And the living coal of fire, 
And the craft that createth a semblance 
And fails of the heart’s desire. 
And the toil that each dawning quickens, 
And the task that is never done, 


And the heart that longeth ever, 
Nor will look to the deed that is won.” 


CHAPTER XXIII 


COLOUR PRINTS 


N an old house, in a low room, and especially 
in one looking on to an old-fashioned garden, 
there is hardly anything that can form a 

more pleasing decoration than a collection of old — 
prints. I remember being particularly attracted 
by such a collection in a house in Scotland, and 
remarking with some satisfaction that the walls 
of the room were covered with a rather prettily 
patterned Old English chintz, and that on it the 
colour prints, in black and gold frames, produced 
a delightfully gay effect. I have heard it said 
that the prices given for colour prints are alto- 
gether ridiculous when compared with those 
given for drawings or paintings, because the print 
is a purely mechanical affair ; but I am afraid that 
the persons who make that remark are not always 
aware of the enormous amount of trouble and 
pains necessary to produce a colour print, and of 
the fact that all the detail concerning its pro- 
duction has to be repeated afresh for every 
impression that is taken. The printer of a colour 
print has to be somewhat of an artist. He has to 
know exactly how to wipe his coloured ink, not 
172 


COLOUR PRINTS 173 


into the lines or dots as if he were preparing for 
monochrome, but out of them, and he has to 
experiment with brush or stump when, very 
neatly and very accurately, he inks in many of 
the smaller details, keeping the outline quite 
clear and, at the same time, rubbing the colour 
into the engraving, so as to fill up the line or 
stipple completely. Flesh tints he has to build 
up, painting them into the plate, adjusting, 
blending, toning, and all this needs that gift of 
care and precision which comes of constant 
exercise. It is almost equivalent to painting up 
the copper-plate, and the greatest attention is 
needed in keeping the colours moist and warm, 
moving the plate backwards and forwards, dusting 
on dry colour, heightening complexion, and then 
in printing his beautiful impression, and, as | 
have just said, doing every part of this detail each 
time for every impression. Hence comes the 
value of really fine, brilliant impressions of colour 
prints. 

In 1898, some foreign ladies pressed into my 
hands a series of colour prints as an acknowledg- 
ment for an act of courtesy they thought I had 
done for them. I endeavoured to explain to 
them that the prints were very precious and, as 
they included an absolutely brilliant impression 
of Condé’s portrait of Mrs. Fitzherbert after 
Cosway, with margins all complete and in pristine 
condition—a print worth now at least four 


174 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING — 


hundred pounds—I had justification for my 
statement. I accepted one small print and 
returned all the large ones, but I had failed to 
make the donors aware of their value, and the 
fate of the Fitzherbert was very melancholy for, 
cut, trimmed and framed, it passed into the 
possession of a person who had no appreciation 
of it, and the others, I fear, shared a similar 
fate. 

To a great extent we owe the art of colour 
printing to the skill of a man whose story is a sad 
one—W. W. Ryland, who brought the method of 
colour printing from France. He was exceedingly 
skilful and ambitious and, in conjunction with 
Angelica Kauffmann, made the colour print a 
very popular thing in the eighteenth century, 
creating a great impression in favour of Angelica 
by reason of the exquisite prints he made from her 
drawings. He came, however, of a strangely 
unlucky family; his brother was a dissolute 
spendthrift who, for highway robbery, was sen- 
tenced to death, and Ryland himself~was first 
successful and then extravagant, after a while in 
serious difficulties, while later on he attempted 
suicide, and eventually, for forgery, was sentenced 
to death. | Seeks: 

His pupil, Bartolozzi, carried on, with ever- 
increasing success, the fashion of the colour print. 
Certainly many of Bartolozzi’s best works were 
produced in those beautiful browns and reds for 


COLOUR PRINTS 175 


which his period was notable, but others of his 
works were depicted in more colours than one, 
and he was surrounded by a group of men such as 
Burke, Collyer, Condé, Knight, Jones, Hogg, 
Gaugain, Nutter, Schiavonetti, J. R. Smith, 
Tompkins, Turner and Ward, who were all masters 
of this beautiful art, and whose works now, if in 
fine condition, fetch very high prices. 

Mark, please, the words “fine condition.” 
Everything depends, in a colour print, upon its 
condition, its colour, its margin. Note also that, 
strictly speaking, there are no such things as 
“ proofs ’’ in colour prints. It seems to be almost 
certain that the earliest impressions taken from a 
plate (and these may be called proofs) were in 
monochrome, and some were on India paper, but 
this was in order to get the plate into condition, 
and to get the artist accustomed to it, as it is said 
that the plate itself was distinctly improved for 
colour purposes by taking off the early proofs ; 
the sharpness and hardness were toned down, but 
the delicacy remained, and then came the colour, 
delicate, soft and charming; but the plate—as 
men knew nothing in those days of facing it—soon 
became worn, and it is only the fine early impres- 
sions that are things of such extraordinary 
beauty. After a while the plate shows clear signs 
of wear, and the later impressions are by no means 
satisfactory, and then very often the plate was 
re-bitten, or re-engraved, and constantly the later 


176 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


prints are crude, quickly printed and unsatis- 
factory. Therefore let the collector use discretion 
in buying, and let not every person who owns 
colour prints jump to the conclusion that theirs 
are the specially fine ones for which connoisseurs 
seek. 

Some of Condé’s impressions, a few months ago, 
fetched between thirty and forty pounds apiece. 
Mrs. Fitzherbert after Cosway realised 38. 
Horace Beckford and Mrs. Jackson very nearly 
the same. Ward’s “ Sallad Girl”’ after Hoppner, 
a fine impression of which is a rare thing, fetched 
£130. Smith's “ Feeding the Pigs ’’ after Morland, 
£40; a pair of prints by -Paye (another able 
painter), £30, and so on. These prices were, 
however, considerably exceeded when a wonderful 
collection of colour prints, got together by the late 
Sir Edward Coates, came into the market. It 
included one or two of the very rare ones, such 
as Northcote’s “‘ Young Lady and Comedian,’ 
Ward’s “ Selling Rabbits,” “ Rustic Felicity ~ 
and others, with works by Angelica, and engravings 
after paintings by Bunbury, Paye, Wheatley and 
Morland. 

Occasionally Bartolozzi’'s engravings are found 
not printed on paper at all, but on satin, and Sir 
Edward Coates had a few of these. They are 
very rare and precious, but unluckily the plates 
from which many of them are printed are still in 
existence, as are also, | am sorry to say, Condé’s 


COLOUR PRINTS 177 


plate for Mrs. Fitzherbert and several more, with 
the result that newly produced impressions from 
these plates are on the market and, of the little 
Bartolozzi’s, even some modern ones are printed. 
on satin, with intent to deceive the unwary. If 
one could but touch the satin prints detection is 
certain, because the old satin was all of silk and 
far richer and softer in quality than the modern, 
which has an admixture of wool or cotton. The 
surface of old satin is, moreover, much more 
creamy than is the hard white of the modern 
satin. | 

Occasionally it is very difficult to detect 
some of these modern impressions. I nearly 
purchased in Florence an exceedingly good 
forgery. It seemed to me impossible that it 
could be modern, but when I found a strange 
reluctance on the part of the dealer to take it 
out of its frame for me to examine the paper it 
was printed upon, I began to hesitate, and when 
at last, yielding to persuasion, he did take it out, 
the watermark revealed a modern paper, and 
even without the sight of the watermark, one’s 
own finger, testing the feel of the paper, made 
one convinced that it was a reproduction. 

I have, however, seen two modern. prints 
printed on fine o/d paper. Where the forger gets 
such paper [ cannot tell, possibly from some 
scrap-book, but the paper was quite genuine, and 


it was only by the aid of a glass that one saw 
M 


178 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


the signs of re-touching on the plate, and of re- 
stippling in one particular part of it, and so 
gathered that the plate was the old one that had 
been touched up after wear, and that the print 
was comparatively worthless. 

Stipple engraving was carried out on an etching 
ground on a copperplate, the outline was all laid 
in by means of small dots, made with a dry 
point, and then the darker parts etched in dots, 
larger and closer together. After the work had 
been bitten in, the lighter parts are laid in with 
a stipple graver, an ordinary engraving tool, held in 
a different fashion. By stipple work, the strokes 
of chalk or crayon can be imitated when the 
irregular dots are carefully and cleverly arranged. 

A great charm about colour printing consists in 
the fact that, mechanical though one is bound 
to call the process, the necessity of which I have 
already spoken for painting in for each plate, 
gives a variety between different impressions. 
Sometimes also the paper takes a different hue 
under the colour; it sometimes absorbs more 
colour than at other times; occasionally the 
flesh work is not even, by reason of certain 
absorbent patches in the paper; or the print 
may have been taken off when the paint was 
hard and settled; or there may be a chemical 
change, and the red may have become browner 
and not as fresh and vivid as in other impres- 
sions; and so the connoisseur likes to select his 


COLOUR PRINTS 179 


choice impressions, to weed out his collection 
from time to time, when he finds a finer im- 
pression of one he already has, and eventually, 
as in the case of the late Sir Edward Coates, to 
have a collection of which almost every print 
has been carefully selected by a competent judge, 
and is as good as time and money can produce. 
The delightfully bright, cheerful look of Sir 
Edward’s rooms in Queen Anne’s Lodge is not 
likely to be forgotten by those who had seen 
them, and all collectors of colour prints regret 
that, through the death of this collector and the 
dispersal of his fine collection, a series of almost 
unequalled beauty will be scattered far and 
wide. 

Colour prints are of various sizes; there are 
some exceedingly choice ones, very precious and 
valuable, no larger than miniatures—in fact, some 
of them represent miniatures—and there are 
others that are foolscap size, and even larger 
than that. They are often to be found with 
print-sellers, and in other shops, but the advice 
of a discreet judge is desirable in purchasing them, 
as the market is flooded with imitations, for the 
fine, choice impressions fetch hundreds of pounds, 
although most of them, when first produced, were 
sold at prices varying from ten shillings up to 
two guineas apiece. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


TRADERS TOKENS 


OST collections of coins, however small, 
contain some few examples of the two 
series of tokens known as those of the 
seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. | 
We do not quite understand, in the present 
day, what it was to have a scarcity of copper 
coinage. There was a prejudice against the issue 
of coins in any baser metal than silver, and 
sovereigns, down to Stuart times, objected to such 
issue. It is true that Elizabeth issued some 
patterns for a legal coinage in copper, but the 
matter went no further, and no current coins 
were ever issued by that great Queen in baser 
metals. She did grant permission to the City of 
Bristol to strike some tokens to be current in 
that city and ten miles round, and this was to- 
wards the close of the sixteenth century, and 
these very rough Elizabethan tokens with C.B. 
on the obverse (Civitas Bristol) are occasionally to 
be found. . 
The Commonwealth Government contemplated 
a copper coinage, and struck patterns, both in 
copper and pewter, but no authorised issue ever 


180 


TRADERS’ TOKENS VALOL 


took place, and it was not until 1613 that a 
copper farthing appeared, when a patent was 
given to Lord Harington of Exton for the issue 
of copper tokens of that denomination. These 
Harington farthings, however, were hated by the 
people, they were so thin and poor, and of such 
small intrinsic value. _ 

Meantime, it was very difficult to purchase 
small things. There was hardly any small 
currency, and the silver coin became more and 
more minute in size, and therefore more and 
more inconvenient, so, in the seventeenth century, 
the people took the matter into their own hands, 
rejected the Harington farthings, and struck 
local tokens for themselves, each little town or 
village having persons in it who issued their own 
token, and the traders had to keep boxes with 
divisions in them, into which to sort these little 
tokens. They passed from hand to hand freely, 
where the issuers were known or the respective 
corporations were accepted, and then they were 
put down by Act of Parliament in 1672, and the 
order was more or less obeyed, although Chester 
and. Norwich issued these tokens till 1674, and 
they were issued in Ireland until 1679. 

The other series, a hundred years later, came 
into force for much the same reason—scarcity of 
copper coinage and strenuous objection to the 
poor coinage that was current. This latter series 
comprised larger pieces, the tokens are about the 


182 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


size of a halfpenny, whereas the seventeenth 
century ones were much smaller, the halfpenny 
being about the size of our farthing, and the 
farthing smaller still. The eighteenth century 
tokens only lasted for a few years, the Anglesey 
Mines halfpenny being the first that was struck, 
and that was followed by many others, some of 
them quite beautiful in their devices and designs, 
some issued by corporations and some by private 
individuals, and the latter formed advertisements 
which passed readily from hand to hand. 


The seventeenth century ones are, however, the - 


more important from the historical point of view, 
and many of them were issued. There was a 
book written all about them by William Boyne, 
in 1859, and it fell to my lot, some thirty years 
later, to issue a new edition, with the assistance 
of collectors all over England, and to very con- 
siderably more than double its original size, 
describing in all thirteen thousand tokens. I can 
claim, therefore, to have some interest in these 
little coins. They were not always circular ; some 
of them are heart-shaped, diamond-shaped, octa- 
gonal, or square, these, of course, being the rarer 
pieces; and, of the circular pieces, the half- 
pennies, as a rule, are more scarce than the 
farthings. Several of them bear interesting refer- 
ences to local trades—lace appearing on Bucking- 
hamshire tokens, and wool on those of Surrey; 
gloves in Leicester and needles in Chichester 


~~ 





TRADERS’ TOKENS 183 


lace at St. Neot’s and the curious yellowish bands 
or stocks appear on the Sherborne tokens, the 
place where they were made; while a particular 
kind of fine serge, called ‘‘ bay” or “say,” is 
alluded to on the Colchester tokens. On the 
tokens of Ashburton we get the teazle, an allusion 
to the process of preparing the cloth carried on 
in that district and to the cultivation of the 
teazle plant. 

Armorial bearings are on many of the tokens, 
and it is curious that, amongst the Cornish tokens, 
' more than a fourth have armorial bearings, show- 
ing the extent to which the old Cornish families 
engaged in local commerce. The arms of all the 
trading companies are to be found, as well as 
those of lesser-known companies, such as the 
Merchants of the Staple, the Merchants Adven- 
turers, the Tollmen, of Stilton and Doncaster, 
the Shearmen, and many others. Local officials 
are commemorated on them ; sometimes it is the 
Portreeve, the Mayor, the Swordbearer, the 
Bailiffs, the High Bailiff, the Constable, the Over- 
seers, or the Aldermen; and on many of the 
tokens appear statements showing their original 
purpose. ‘“‘For the Poor,’ ‘‘ For the Poor's 
Advantage,” “‘ The Poor’s Halfpenny,” ‘‘ Remem- 
ber the Poor,” ‘‘ Change and Charity,” ‘“‘ To be 
Changed for the Poor,’’ or even, in rhyming form : 


“When you please 
I'll change these.” 


184 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


In many cases, the issuer joined to his initials 
the initial of his wife. In some cases, if he had 
been married twice, he put both wives’ initials. 
In frequent instances, he gave the sign under 
which his shop was known, or some representation 
of his trade—a butcher having a knife and chopper, 
a tallow chandler a candle; other people rolls of 
bread, flowers, bottles, woolpacks, men making 
candles, and similar emblems. 

We get a good deal of information about the 
inns of the time from these tokens, and their 
names, especially those of London ; the “ Boar’s. 
Head ”’ at Eastcheap, for instance, a house referred 
to by Shakespeare, and the “‘ Devil and Dunstan ” 
at Temple Bar, and the “‘ Cock ” in Fleet Street ; 
while some of the country posting-houses men- 
tioned on them are even now important houses 
of call, as, for instance, the ‘‘ Anchor ”’ at Liphook, 
the ‘‘ Fountain ’’ at Portsmouth, the ‘‘White Hart”’ 
at Harford Bridge, and the ‘“‘ Phoenix” at Harley 
Row. . oid 
This issue of these small tokens soon drove out 
of existence the thin, breakable Harington regal 
farthings, which only weighed six grains apiece, 
and, although quite a large fortune was made by 
the Harington family out of the patent granted 
in 1613, yet the Haringtons were execrated by 
the people for forcing the coins upon them. 
The issuers of these tokens were often important 
people in the districts; the Howells were notable 


TRADERS’ TOKENS _—_sa 85 


people in Lynn; the Owners were the people 
who established a children’s hospital in Yar- 
mouth, and members of the same family opposed 
ship money. One Brighton issuer was the original 
tenant of the old Ship Inn, and another married 
the captain of the vessel in which King Charles 
escaped from England; while an issuer named 
Treagle, at Taunton, was one of the earliest 
booksellers in Somerset, and the man who issued 
a Civil War publication called ‘‘ Man’s Wrath 
and God’s Praise.” One issuer at Kendal was 
the inventor of a green woollen material called 
“ Kendal green,” which both Shakespeare and 
Dryden refer to. A bookseller in Marlborough 
called Hammond issued his token with a book 
upon it, and there is a touching reference in the 
town records to him: “The Royalists took 
Marlborough in 1642, and for 3 hours fed a fire 
with Hammond’s books,’ and poor Hammond 
himself has left a record in his own handwriting : 
“T have but little left; I have saved not above 
eight pounds’ worth of all my goods and books ; 
my children are crying to go home, and [ tell 
them we have no home to go to. God help me, 
what am I to do?” I wonder why it is, by the 
way, that not a single token-issuer in Wells (and 
there were many of them), put his wife’s initials 
onthe token. Were all the leading traders in that 
city bachelors ? | | 

The eighteenth century tokens are easier to 


186 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


collect ; they are much more often to be found, and 
to the general public they are more attractive, 
because of their size and their decorative value. 
Many of them commemorate historic events, or 
events of local importance, the establishment of a 
great bookseller’s shop in the place, the success 
of a shipping adventure, the encouragement of a 
young man who showed great genius in Birming- 
ham, the foundation of a hospital in 1728, the 
establishment of a new distillery, the work of a 
new die engraver or medallist, the advertisement 
of a man who called himself a posture master, of 
another who was noted for cheap haberdashery - 
and tailor’s trimmings, of one who issued a 
Court Gazette, and of another who recom- 
mended some special lozenges which he had 
invented, girls making lace, men making fishing 
rods, people drinking coffee at a newly established 
coffee-house, the sale of tea at a price lower than 
most people had bought it before, the picking of 
hops, the soling of boots, the boring of wells, the 
making of windlasses and cog-wheels and ropes, 
and string, and windmills, the existence of 
important old castles, such as those at Kendal, 
Bolton, Guildford and Bowes; Abbey Churches 
at Bath, Coventry, Crewkerne are also com- 
memorated, and the mining industry is referred 
to frequently. The standard book about them is 
that written by Batty, which describes about 
fifteen thousand. 


TRADERS’ TOKENS 187 


There are no very great prizes to be obtained 
in either series, the tokens of unusual shape in the 
seventeenth century, and those issued in the 
northern counties being rarer than others, whilst 
there is always a demand amongst collectors for 
really fine sharp specimens of the eighteenth 
century, but they are comparatively easy things 
to obtain, and interesting to collect, and there is 
a great deal of historic information to be gleaned 
from them. 


CHAPTER XXV 


LACE BOBBINS 


MONGST the curious things that people are 
A now collecting are the bobbins used in 
lace-making, in the counties of North- 
amptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and 
Devonshire. There is no particular art concerned 
in a collection of this kind, but a great deal of 
pleasure may be taken in gathering together lace 
bobbins, arranging them in groups, and exhibiting 
them in cases, and when a substantial collection 
is made, one is almost sure to find a market for it. 
The better the collection is, the better grouped 
and arranged, the higher the price to be obtained. 
There is also the amusement of trying to decipher 
the inscriptions upon the bobbins, and some 
pleasure in admiring the dexterity with which they 
were made, besides the joy of being able to get 
hold of bobbins entirely different from any that 
have been seen before, and the satisfaction of 
finding some dated or named, or with special 
historic interest. 
Bobbins are made of all sorts of material, from 
gold and silver down to wood, bone, brass, ivory 


and pewter. The majority, of course, are of wood, 
188 


LACE BOBBINS ay E86 


and then, as has been pointed out by the leading 
writer on the subject, Mr. Wright, there are all 
varieties of wood, boxwood, ebony, maple, cherry, 
etc. Sometimes the wooden ones are decorated 
with little bits of metal, sometimes in the hollows 
of them there are smaller tiny bobbins, or beads, 
or shots. Occasionally they are dated, generally 
early in the nineteenth century, and sometimes 
they have names upon them. 

Amongst bone and metal bobbins there is 
great variety, and the utmost ingenuity was 
applied in making these quaint little objects. 
They were often used in connection with rustic 
courtships, and were gifts to the favoured maid, 
that she might use them on her lace cushion, and 
think of the donor, and in that case, they have 
delightful inscriptions upon them, somewhat 
resembling the little mottoes that used to be 
found in old-fashioned crackers. Perhaps some 
of them were actually the means of courting, and 
they bear such statements as ‘‘ Let me have the 
wedding-day, my dear,” “‘ Sweet love, be mine,”’ 
“Meet me by moonlight alone,’ ‘“ Love, when 
will you marry me?” and so on. In others, 
perhaps, the statement is not quite so definite. 
‘I long to see my love once more,” “I had a 
mother once like you,” ‘‘ Love me for ever,’ 
“Hearts united must live contented,” and 
occasionally, perhaps, a bobbin is returned, on 
which the girl herself has made some sort of reply, 


190 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


as bobbins have been found bearing such inscrip- 
tions as “‘ Kiss me quick, and don't be shy,” 
“Love me till the day I die,’ “I love you,” 
or the simple words, ‘‘ Fancy me,’ or, still shorter, 
the single word “ Yes,” and these love-making 
bobbins form quite a _ pretty collection by 
themselves. 

There are the series that Mr. Wright calls 
‘puzzle bobbins,’’ on which the inscriptions are 
in a sort of cipher, not easy to determine, or in 
which verses of Scripture are quoted, which appear 
to have a double meaning, and give the informa- 
tion from a shy lover that was intended. Those 
that have names upon them are of great interest, 
because, in some cases, the descendants of the 
persons who marked their names on old bobbins, 
can be found still pursuing the picturesque 
occupation that their grandparents pursued in> 
earlier days, and quite interesting little groups 
might be made with bobbins that have the names 
of lace-making villages upon them. There are 
several, for instance, that are marked as belonging 
to Olney in Buckinghamshire, others to Cranfield 
in Bedfordshire, and yet others to places in 
- Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, where lace-. 
making has been carried on for ~~ a long day, 
and is still pursued. 

Another group may be made of bobbins which 
relate to important national events, as, for 
instance, those which commemorate the corona- 


LACE BOBBINS | IgI 


tion of Queen Victoria, the various troubles in 
the Crimea, the Battle of Waterloo, and local 
events, such as local murders, trials, executions, 
elections and transportations. Sometimes the 
bobbins contain quite long inscriptions, generally 
from the Bible, because the lacemakers were a 
religious people, and well acquainted with Scrip- 
ture, and one also finds quotations from hymns 
or popular songs. Little bits of the songs that 
were sung while people were making their lace 
appear upon these bobbins, and sometimes some 
humorous comic statements. 

Then there are the bobbins that are to be found 
in sets, which are very rare. There is a set in 
the possession of one of the lacemakers which 
commemorates the birth of her grandmother and 
her great-aunts, each being marked with the name 
of one particular child, and the date of birth. 
Another set of three commemorates the birth of a 
set of triplets, and the name of each child appears 
on the set of bobbins. In another museum there 
is a set of twelve bobbins each of which is 
inscribed with a portion of the Lord’s Prayer. 
The alphabet and long lists of numerals are to 
be found, and occasionally information that 
they were intended as presents to particular 
persons, or names of special people connected 
with the village where they are made, or with 
the district, such for example as Wesley, Bunyan, 
or Nelson, 


192 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


They may be grouped according to the beads 
which form part of their decoration, and sometimes 
these beads are of considerable beauty; some 
little bits of Bristol glass are to be found on one 
bobbin, another is adorned with some beautiful 
Egyptian mummy beads, which must have been 
brought home by some explorer, others, perhaps 
the gift of a sailor, are adorned with some seeds, 
generally of a bright colour, and from such 
distant places as Patagonia, New Guinea, Southern 
Australia. Then there are the quaint patterns 
that are peculiar to a certain district. Little 
floral emblems that are favoured by the lace- 
makers, and one of the great aims of the 
collector is to get what is called a series of 
bobbins, that is to say, a set of twelve, often 
were carved in similar fashion, in order. to 
be kept together by the lacemaker whose good 
fortune it was to receive them. The whole 
set used in Devonshire on a lace pillow was 
about twenty-four, but there has never yet 
been a set of twenty-four bobbins discovered 
alike, or even resembling one another, and it 
is probable that the ingenious person would 
find his patience overpowered by the effort of 
making so many. Sometimes, in a village, may 
be found an old woman who has been a beauty 
in her day, and she may possess a series of 
bobbins given her by the boys who paid her atten- 
tion in the days gone past. One writer refers to — 


LACE BOBBINS 193 


such a person, and the bobbin she prized most 
read : 


“ When this you see, remember me, 
And bear me in your mind, 
For all the world is naught to me 
So long as you are kind.” 


History is very much made up of little side- 
lights which give, in indirect fashion, information 
about the people of a village, and in gathering up 
this information collectors of bobbins are doing 
good service, because these inscribed bobbins will 
disappear, people will buy their bobbins from the 
manufacturer, or from his agent, and the old idea 
of carving them in the place will pass away. 
Local museums are therefore glad to obtain 
collections of bobbins that were used in the 
district, and to find on the bobbins little scraps 
of information about the patterns used in the lace 
itself and the lacemaker. 

To the tourist the collection of bobbins will be 
found an interesting hobby. He will not be able 
to purchase all those that he covets, but a little 
strategy may be practised, and often a lace- 
maker is glad to exchange some bobbins for a 
coin of the realm. 

The collector should be advised to note care- 
fully the name of the place where the bobbin was 
obtained, and he will find that there are char- 
acteristics to be found on different bobbins, that 


have come from a particular part of the country. 
N 


194 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 
Hardly any two bobbins can be found alike. 
Moreover, there is comparatively little forgery in 
these dainty objects, and the forgeries can 
generally be detected by the mechanical manner 
in which they are turned out. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


AMBER 


natural objects; its glowing golden 

colour, its exquisite, smooth, silky texture, 
are alike remarkable. There is a great lump of 
it in the window of a tobacconist in the Burlington 
Arcade, which always fascinates me as I pass by, 
but those who only know amber in its two distinc- 
tive shades of yellow, clear and dull, have little 
appreciation of the glory of the colour of the 
amber that can be found in Sicily, sometimes of 
superb red colour, occasionally blue, and often 
opalescent and fluorescent, with wonderful shades 
of green and yellow and pink. 

“ What is that curious brooch you have on ? ”’ 
I said to a lady who once called upon me, and she 
replied that unfortunately it was only a piece of 
bright coloured paste she had found amongst 
her grandmother’s things. 

I begged her to let me see it, and tore up some 
minute pieces of tissue paper, and then, rubbing 
her brooch on the sleeve of my coat, proved to 
her at once that she had a piece of fine Sicilian 
amber in her possession, of precious quality, for 

£95 


MBER is one of the most. beautiful of all 


196 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


all the tiny morsels of tissue paper clung to it, 
jumping up to meet it as I held it towards them. 

“You have surely a very curious ornament to 
your hand-bag ?”’ was the remark that I made 
on another occasion, noticing a pendent blob of 
yellow hanging to a very pretty satin bag. 

Again the owner knew nothing about it, and 
it was an exquisite piece of amber, enshrining a 
fine green beetle of a sort of diamond back variety, 
and that lump of amber now adorns the owner's 
neck, suspended from a gold chain. It turned 
out afterwards that the hand-bag had been made 
by a person who had stolen various ornaments 
at an earlier period of her career, without much 
knowledge of their value, and had used them to 
decorate the hand-bags she sold. 

- Occasionally there are carved pieces of amber 
to be found, and I have seen a more or less com- 
plete set of chessmen carved in amber. 

In a country house in England there is a magnifi- 
cent chess-board, mounted in silver, in which the 
.chequers are of amber of different shades of 
colour. It originally belonged to one of the early 
Stuart monarchs, and is an amazingly fine thing. 

I once missed purchasing an amber casket ; the 
price seemed high, but was not really so; when I 
returned to the shop, someone else had carried 
offthe treasure. There are many people nowadays 
wearing amber beads, and for a while the most 
popular form of amber seems to be the dull, 


AMBER 197 


cloudy yellow, but the more beautiful amber 
is the deep, clear, almost transparent orange- 
coloured amber, and in many instances these 
remarkable pieces of fossil resin enshrine beauti- 
fully preserved insects, leaves, even fruits and 
flowers, hair and feathers, which became enveloped 
in the mysterious ages of the past, when the amber 
was fluid. 

One of the reasons why amber is used by 
smokers is because the Turks always said it was 
quite incapable of transmitting any infection, it can 
be cleansed in a minute, and as when they desire to 
pay a guest particular honour they transfer the 
mouthpiece of the pipe from the host’s mouth to 
that of the guest, it was desirable that something 
should be used about which there was no-fear of 
infection. . 

In buying pieces of amber or amber ornaments, 
the collector should be careful that he does not 
obtain either artificial amber, which has no 
electrical power at all, or what is sometimes called 
ambroid, really composed of small bits of amber, 
softened and pressed together. This pressed 


amber has a certain amount of electrical power, 


but it can always be detected through the micro- 
scope, as the effect of it under polarised light is 
entirely different to that which appears when 
actual amber is examined. 

In the days of the Renaissance amber was in 
very great demand, and was highly regarded on 


198 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


account of its beauty. In the museums of 
Florence can be seen several splendid amber cups 
and caskets; there are fine ones also in Spain, 
but I have seen several good examples in the 
hands of London and provincial dealers, sometimes 
with carved figures at the corners of the caskets, 
sometimes associated with carved ivory panels, 
not often in fine condition, but always delightful 
in colour and charm. 

The best of yellow amber comes from K6nigs- 
berg, and is fished up from the Baltic Sea, but the 
most glorious of amber is that which is found in 
Sicily, especially near to Catania. 

Very few things are more beautiful than the 
exquisite bits of amber that are made up into 
necklaces, ear-rings and pendent jewels, and are 
amongst the great treasures of the Sicilian people. 

Even in Italy, the material is not always recog- 

nised. In the largest collection that has ever 
been formed of Italian jewellery, I discovered a 
necklace with three pieces of beautiful Sicilian 
rosy amber, of the exquisite red that can be seen 
at the time of a sunset. 
_ The owner, an able expert, was sure that ihe 
material was only composition, but again, the 
electric power that amber acquires by friction 
proved that my surmise was a correct one—that, 
set in this piece of Sicilian jewellery, were three 
as lovely bits of Catanian amber as I had ever 
seen, 


AMBER | 199 

The student of natural history is sure to be 
interested in amber, and one of the curious things 
about the treasures that are found inside amber 
is that we have’no remains of any mammal, 
except certain tufts of hair. 

Nor is there anything which relates to the 
creatures which lived in the water, but insects that 
would find their homes in trees are frequently to 
be seen, such as spiders, ants and flies, while 
the existence of some portions of feathers reveals 
to us the presence of birds in the old amber 
forests. | | 

There is certainly in Munich part of the remains 
of a lizard to be seen in a lump of amber, and in 
Berlin there is what is stated to be a portion of a 
fish, but it is almost certain that both of these 
things have been introduced artificially, because 
amber can be softened with hot oil, and by means 
of some pressure two broken pieces of amber can 
be brought together. 

The leaves that are to be found in amber almost 
all belong to pine trees, but there are also repre- 
sentatives of such trees as the oak and the 
willow, the beech and the poplar to be found, 
as well as some leaves that have not hitherto 
been identified as belonging to any existing tree. 

- Moreover, both the leaves and the blossom of 
the campnor tree have been found in German 
amber, showing that this tree, which now we 
only find in the East, in what are called Tertiary 


200 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


times, must have been growing in Northern 
Europe. 

The Chinese were fond of amber, and there are 
several interesting buttons for Chinese robes to 
be found in that material, sometimes beautifully 
carved, representing strange monsters or curious 
figures. 

The Japanese also were attracted by the beauty 
of the same material, and very often, amongst 
Japanese things, pieces of amber can be found. 

Then, the stoppers of snuff bottles are often 

of amber, and the pendant ornaments from the 
long chains of beads that Chinese mandarins wear 
are sometimes of amber, and are worth searching 
for. 
_ A collection of pieces of amber can be of great 
beauty, and as amber can be found almost all 
over the world, various different kinds can be 
gathered up. | 

For example, Rumanian amber is often wonder- 
fully flecked with points of colour, resembling gold 
and silver, and there are some beautiful examples 
of it in the museum at Bukarest. From very 
remote times it has been a delight to the eye. 

There is a fine cup of amber in the Brighton 
Museum, which came from a barrow discovered 
in Sussex. Bits of amber are found in Anglo- 
Saxon graves, even in prehistoric caves, and 
amber has been dug up at Cromer, Felixstowe, 
Aldeburgh, and other places. 





AMBER 201 


In Russia, in one of the Emperor’s palaces, was 
a room decorated with amber and containing 
beautiful works in that material. It is many 
years since I saw it. I wonder what has become 
of it? Collectors who are in search of a new 
hobby may well be recommended to take up the 
study of amber, and they will find a great joy in it. 

It is also worth while to read up what has been 
written about amber, concerning the old ideas 
that it was useful as an amulet, that it had 
medicinal properties, that it was hung around the 
neck, that it was used even in cookery, and then 
the student may be advised to look up the kindred 
subject of ambergris and find out how often 
confusion has arisen between the two entirely 
different materials having no resemblance to one 
another, save in name. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


PORTRAITS IN ENAMEL 


the collection of miniatures belonging to a 

friend, to find that he did not realise the 
importance and artistic merit of miniatures 
painted in enamel, nor was he able to distinguish 
between ordinary miniatures and enamel por- 
traits. He was guarding from the sun’s rays 
some enamel portraits which no power on earth 
_ could have faded, and he had put aside some other 
enamels on the ground that they were purely 
mechanical things, unworthy of being in his 
collection. 

An enamel portrait is just as much a piece of 
careful painting as is an ordinary miniature, and 
in some respects it requires more skill to paint it 
than it does to paint on ivory or paper. The 
colours used are composed of finely powdered 
enamel and they change in the furnace, so that 
what is put on with the brush as brown may, 
perhaps, when vitrified by the heat of the furnace, 
turn to red, and what appears to be grey may 
come out an exceedingly brilliant blue. The 
painter, therefore, in painting an enamel on a 


202 


| WAS surprised some time ago when inspecting 





PORTRAITS IN ENAMEL 203 


piece of copper or gold, as the case may be, has 
to bear in mind what are the actual colours he is 
using, although, when he does use them, they 
do not resemble those colours; and he must also 
be prepared for the fact that when, under the 
influence of heat, his colours become fluid, a 
degree or two too much of heat may entirely ruin 
all his work, or one colour may run over the 
others and so the whole portrait be spoilt. He 
has not only to paint with the greatest care, 
but he has to watch the object while in its 
little furnace and withdraw it at exactly 
‘the right moment. The result, if well carried 
out, is an absolutely permanent portrait, and 
it may be an object of the greatest possible 
beauty. . | 

There were many artists who worked in 
enamel. Only a few weeks ago I saw a very 
large collection of enamel portraits which had 
taken nearly a lifetime to prepare and which 
will, I suppose, eventually come into the 
market. It embraced portraits by all the 
notable enamellers. 

Of these enamellers perhaps the greatest 
were the Genevan artist, Petitot, and his son 
(who had the same name), and their partner, 
Jacques Bordier. Miniatures by Petitot are 
very highly prized and are works of extra- 
ordinary beauty. Some of the very finest 
-Petitot ever executed were sold a few weeks 


204 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


ago at the Burdett-Coutts sale, and fetched high 
prices. One of them, representing Charles II, 
realised 420 guineas; one of Charles I, 290 
guineas; and one of the Duchess of Orleans, 
340 guineas, with others in very similar ratio. 
The marvel of Petitot’s work is its extreme 
-minuteness. Both the Petitots must have pos- 
sessed almost miraculous skill in craftsman- 
ship, because every line of the full wigs worn 
in their time and every detail of the features is 
wrought with extreme delicacy and charm, and 
the miniature was vitrified with marvellous skill 
so that every colour has burned to exactly the 
right shade, and there is not the smallest sign of 
any overrunning or spoiling. Petitot’s works 
have always been very highly esteemed. The 
portrait of the Duchess of Orleans just mentioned, 
belonged to a Swedish enameller called Zincke, 
who kept it as his model and who tried his 
hardest to equal it. He sold it to Horace 
Walpole, and at Walpole’s sale Lady Burdett- 
Coutts bought it. Zincke’s work is very well 
known. He came over to England in 1706 and 
painted an enormous number of small portraits, 
and it is said that his portraits had to be 
fused four or five times before perfection was 
obtained ; but some of Petitot’s went into the 
furnace as much as ten times to obtain perfect 
results. 

Boit was another Swede who worked in England 


PORTRAITS IN ENAMEL 205 


in Queen Anne’s time, and who produced some 
big enamels. Zincke’s work one knows by the 
brilliance of the blue he used in the draperies, or 
by the red that he often used on men’s coats. 
Some of his finest miniatures are very precious 
things. One of the very best I have seen for a 
long time, signed and dated, was bought in a 
jeweller’s shop in Cornwall for a very few shillings, 
and had ornamented the back of a fine watch. It 
now adorns a notable collection, and I believe the 
owner gave some two hundred or two hundred and 
fifty pounds for what the dealer picked up for a 
few shillings. 

There were a few portraits made in Battersea 
enamel, but these are not very satisfactory, nor 
are they attractive. In the latter part of the 
eighteenth century there was a clever Norfolk 
enameller, called Spicer, and then there were two 
or three other eighteenth century enamellers who 
ought to be mentioned, as, for instance, Hone, 
Spencer and Meyer. Spencer, by the way, began 
life as a footman, but developed an extraordinary 
talent for painting, and his master sent him to a 
school of design and helped him to set up as an 
artist. His portraits are small—about the size 
of a halfpenny. 

One of the joys of collecting enamels consists 
in the fact that the portrait is permanent, that 
no light will injure it, and that, given proper care, 
it will last for ever. Even if it falls to the ground 


206 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


it does not, as a rule, chip or get damaged; it 
must not, of course, be trampled upon because 
the enamel is curved, and a heavy footfall may 
cause the enamel to flake off the copper or gold 
foundation. But, beyond a damage of that kind, 
an enamel is practically indestructible. I saw one 
a little while ago that, by accident, had even 
fallen into the fire. Luckily the fire was not hot 
enough to hurt it and, with the exception of a 
very slight damage at the edge, it had been 
retrieved in good condition. 3 

The last man, or, one ought to say, the last 
two men to execute fine enamels in England in 
the old style were father and son, Henry and 
Henry P. Bone. Some of their miniatures are 
very large—cabinet size, one might call them. 
Many were copies of well-known pictures, others 
studies from life, especially those by the younger 
Bone ; and then they were succeeded by Essex, 
who was enamel painter to Queen Victoria—a 
clever enameller and an accomplished chemist. 
He wrote a book on enamel painting, and died in 
1869. There is no special demand for the work 
of Essex, although some of his portraits are really 
quite beautiful; but for the smaller works of 
Bone, especially those of the younger Bone, there 
is a constant demand. , 

Collectors will do well to take an enamel out of 
its case, or to get a jeweller to do so, because 
generally they will find the enameller’s signature 


PORTRAITS IN ENAMEL 207 


on the back; and that again is a delight in 
collecting enamels, because one can generally be 
certain whose work the portrait is, and, burnt 
in at the back there is often even more than 
the signature. Sometimes the account of when the 
enamel was made, sometimes the address of the 
artist, and occasionally, information respecting 
the person, all of which makes the enamel a great 
deal more interesting and worthy of a place in a 
good collection. Those who are in search of a new 
hobby and who are not disposed to pay the big 
prices now demanded for miniatures, whether 
early ones on paper, or late ones on ivory, would 
do well to collect these bright, gleaming enamel 
portraits and interest themselves in the stories of 
the artists who produced them. 

There are some enamellers at the present day 
who are doing good work, but there has never 
arisen anybody who could equal the superb work 
of the Petitots, or the wonderful productions of 
their relative, Prieur. Sometimes the very frames 
that surround the enamels are masterpieces of 
enameller’s work. There was one Frenchman 
who produced beautiful floral frames in enamel, 
and whose work is very rare indeed and fetches 
a high price. A little case full of enamel portraits 
is a great source of joy. 

The Jones collection in the South Kensington 
Museum contains some beautiful works by Petitot, 
which anyone can go and see. There are also 


208 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


some fine enamels in other parts of the same 
museum, and in the Salting collections. There 
are several other museums where enamels can 
be studied, notably the Ashmolean Museum in 
Oxford, and the Holburne Museum at Bath. 





CHAPTER XXVIII 


WATCHES 


ROM earliest childhood men have always 
loved mechanical toys, and a watch has 
something of the attraction of a living 

creature about it; it almost seems to possess 
life and to constitute itself a companion. 
It is, moreover, a thing of intrinsic beauty in 
itself. i deans 

There are infinite varieties of watches, hence 
there have been many collectors, and there are few 
things more delightful to possess. 

It is practically hopeless to try and obtain a 
watch by the man who is said to have originated 
watch-making, Henlein (1480-1542), and one of 
whose production belonged to Martin Luther. I 
did see one once in Vienna, but the signature 
was undoubtedly a forgery, and I believe that one 
of the earliest known dated watches is one of 
1505. The earliest watches were really table 
clocks, and they stood upon a table, desk, or 
prie-dieu, and were not carried on the person. 
When, later on, they came to be worn, it was 
openly, not in the pocket, but swung from a 


chatelaine or chain ; the use of the pocket having 
O 209 


210 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


probably been introduced by the Puritans, whose 
dislike of display induced them to conceal their 
time-keepers from the public gaze. — 

Our word “‘ fob’”’ comes from the Low German 
fubbe, a pocket. When Shakespeare speaks of 
Jacques and says, ‘‘He drew a dial from his 
poke,” he certainly does not speak of a pocket 
watch, but probably of some kind of portable 
sundial with a compass attached to it, because, if 
a watch in that day had been worn, it would be 
round the neck on a chatelaine, or set in a ring or 
bracelet. Malvolio speaks about winding up a 
watch, and Sebastian, in ‘“‘ The Tempest,” says, 
“winding up the watch of his wit’’; but these 
were table clocks, such as the one given to 
Elizabeth, and made by Bartholomew Nusam, 
and the one given to Queen Mary in 1556, and 
made by Nicholas Urseau. 

These earlier watches were not always square. 
Some, especially those made for the heads of 
monastic houses, were cross-shaped ; many of the 
Continental ones were in the shape of an egg; 
others represented a skull, while rock-crystal 
and various other precious materials were used 
in forming their cases. In the time of Louis XIII 
many were beautifully decorated in enamel, 
especially by artists who lived round about Blois, 
and these enamel watches are rare treasures 
which collectors are eager to obtain. What we 
know as pair-case watches came in about 1640, 


WATCHES 2II 


when the outer case was sometimes of fish-skin, 
tortoiseshell, gold or leather, and chased and 
otherwise ornamented, while the inner watch was 
kept plain and severe in character. Some of these 
pair-case watches contain what are known as 
watch-papers, delightful little advertisements, 
printed on circular papers, to fit inside the outer 
case. 

The introduction of a hand to denote the 
seconds and also the use of two hands on the 
watch instead of one, belongs to a period of about 
1670. The earliest watches are German, and 
following them came the clever French mechanics, 
but in England we had a very famous school of 
watchmakers, from the time of Charles I, com- 
mencing, as regards really notable people, with 
Edward East, who was well at work in about 
1635, and who was followed by one of the greatest 
English watchmakers, Tompion; and he by 
Graham and Quare. These three men represent 
the very best of English workmanship. There 
were a few notable men of even earlier date than 
this. For instance, William Anthony was clock- 
maker to Henry VIII; there is a fine clock in 
existence bearing his initials and dated 1571. 
Bartholomew Nusam, who worked for Elizabeth, 
was probably a Yorkshireman. David Ramsay, 
whe made for James I, was a Scotsman; but 
others who preceded East were of foreign extrac- 
tion, although many of them came over to England 


212 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


and settled in this country. East was a Quaker, 
and many of the best English watchmakers 
belonged to that faith; for example, Quare, 
Wagstaffe, Tompion, Graham and Peckover were 
all Quakers. When Charles I played games in 
the Mall, the prizes for the competitions were 
very often what were called “ Easts,’’ meaning 
thereby a watch with its chain complete, made 
by Edward East, who resided near to the Tennis 
Court and then removed to Fleet Street, where 
we find him living in 1635. He was one of the 
ten persons named in the original charter of the 
Clockmakers’ Company, and to the records of that 
Company we owe a great deal of information 
concerning English watch and clock makers. 
Amongst watchmakers perhaps the very greatest 
of all was Louis Breguet, whose period was from 
1747 to 1823, and no watchmaker ever exceeded 
him in originality or in skill. Almost all his 
watches are different from one another, and the 
dials are so beautiful that each watch is an artistic 
joy. Breguet loved to make complicated watches 
—those that would show the days of the month 
and the week, that would have, perhaps, two 
complete movements, or would be self-winding, 
the spring moving up and down when the watch 
was worn and the watch being wound up after 
its wearer had walked for about fifteen minutes. 
Repeating watches were a great joy to Breguet. 
Sometimes they repeated in different methods— 


“SHHOLVA\ HONAYY GIO ONILSHYALNI ANOS 





ie) 


RW 





WATCHES 233 


the hour when the face was upwards, and the date 
when the face was downwards, and the sound is 
derived from one, or even from two or three, 
different gongs. 

The centenary of Breguet will be celebrated in 
Paris this year, and it is anticipated that an 
unrivalled collection of his watches will be ex- 
hibited on that occasion. One English collector, 
and he is the supreme authority on Breguet and 
on his watches, anticipates being able to show 
over a hundred of the most perfect examples of the 
work of this very ingenious craftsman. Breguet 
worked for Louis XV and Marie Antoinette. He 
once helped Marat to escape from an awkward 
situation, and Marat gave him a pass. across the 
Channel in 1793. He stayed in England for two 
years and worked for George III, then went back 
again to Paris, found his factory had been burnt 
to the ground, rebuilt it, and for thirty years 
continued to produce the finest watches that have 
ever been seen. Fortunately, Breguet’s papers 
and books are still in existence, and as he num- 
bered all his watches the history of almost every 
one can be ascertained, even to the extent of 
knowing when the watch was returned to the 
maker for repair or alteration. No one quite 
knows how he compounded the silver that he used 
on the dials of his finest watches. There is a 
peculiar grey tint about the silver that is very 
attractive. Breguet’s watches have frequently 


214 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


been forged and copied, and the collector needs 
to be on his guard lest he should be taken in by 
a comparatively modern forgery. Once the beauty 
of a Breguet watch, however, is appreciated, a 
genuine movement is quickly detected, and there 
are certain peculiarities about the works and the 
signature on the dial with which Breguet collectors 
are well acquainted. A great many fine Breguets 
have got out of sight, and perchance some of them 
will be discovered now that people are beginning 
to talk about the coming commemoration and 
about the fine exhibition there will be of the works 
of Breguet, his son, and his grandson. A genuine 
Breguet watch is always well worth acquiring. 

The business is still carried on in Paris and 
beautiful watches are on sale, but nothing can 
possibly be produced in the present day to surpass, 
for example, the magnificent watch Breguet made 
for Marie Antoinette, or those—that were almost 
equally important—made for Louis XVIII, the 
Prince Regent, Prince Demidoff, Princess Murat, 
Lord Gower, Lord Berwick, and many notable 
personages of his day. 

The collector of watches shout specialise. 
Some will keep to the old English pair-case 
watches, others seek the decorated ones of the 
period of Louis XIII; others again, watches in 
rock-crystal, others the finest examples of the 
early English makers, and yet others confine their 
attention to choice watches by some of the modern 


WATCHES 215 


makers—Dent, Frodsham or Smith. Then there 
are those who confine their attention entirely to 
watches by Breguet, and a very large number who 
just have two or three choice watches, thoroughly 
good timekeepers, either by first-rate English or 
French makers. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


DECANTER LABELS 


connected with the wine trade is the 

most interesting collection of decanter 
labels I have ever seen, and probably a collection 
which has no rival, except in the Brown collection 
at the London Museum. There are not many 
people who have taken the trouble to collect 
these interesting examples of silver work, and I 
can recommend those who are in search of a new 
hobby to gather together some of these pretty 
things. I have many myself, and I was much 
interested in seeing this collection. I suppose, 
originally, these labels were put upon bottles 
rather than upon decanters, because the very 
earliest are ring-shaped and would drop over the 
neck of the bottle, and there are plates which are 
attached to wire rings, and hang from these rings, 
and they also are intended, I expect, for bottles. 
The best ring-shaped ones are of ivory or bone 
and these are rare. It would be remembered that 
many of the old wine bottles now being carefully 
collected have badges upon them, a sort of stamp, 
seal or boss, to show for whom the wine was made, 

216 


T the City office of an important person 


DECANTER LABELS 217 


and these stamps vary, and are in some cases of ex- 
treme interest, bearing the names of private persons 
who commissioned the wine, or had the bottles 
in their cellar marked in that fashion, or the names 
of the merchants who imported the wine. When 
these stamps on the bottles were done away with, 
then came the series of labels, to fasten on to the 
decanters, generally with pretty chains that hang 
round the neck of the decanter, and with labels 
of all sorts of charming shapes. | 

Some of the very best are shaped like vine 
leaves and have the name of the wine in perforated 
letters. My collector friend has a beautiful group 
of vine leaves in silver, with the word “claret”’ 
perforated upon it, and a single vine leaf for an 
Italian wine has the word “ Bronti”’ in similar 
fashion, while another pendent vine leaf has upon 
it the word “‘ Malmsly.’’ Other labels are com- 
posed of various groups of these leaves, sometimes 
associated, as would be fitting, with a decoration 
representing a bunch of grapes. There is a beauti- 
ful label of this description in the London Museum, 
with the word “ Bucellas’’ upon it; others are 
labelled ‘‘ Sauterne,”’ ‘‘ Claret,” ‘“‘ Hock” and 
““ Madeira.”’ 

Sometimes the labels are more characteristic 
still; for instance, there is one representing a 
cask, and bearing above it the word “ Claret ”’ ; 
another white wine label has the figure of Bacchus 
seated on a barrel, and some of the Port and 


218 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Madeira labels have an amusing representation of 
a squirrel upon them, sitting upright, happily 
enjoying a meal of nuts, and so offering a broad 
hint to the consumer of the port, madeira, or 
sherry, that nothing would be more favourable 
for the appreciation of the flavour of the wine than 
a few nuts. 

Sometimes the labels are exceedingly simple. 
There are plain circular ones, just a roundel with 
the word ‘ Madeira”’ or ‘‘ Malaga’’ upon it. 
There are simple leaves, with hardly any veining, 
on which appear the words “‘ Hock ”’ or “ Moselle,” 
and there are some very plain labels, just bands of 
silver, one notably being intended for Champagne, 
and having the name of the wine spelt in 
curious fashion—‘‘ Champaign.” In the collection 
there are many labels bearing the inscriptions 
“W. Wine,” evidently meaning ‘‘ white wine,” 
and one wonders what was the particular white 
wine that was so much in favour in the eighteenth 
century that there was no need of describing it 
by name, the generic term being sufficient. Then 
there are some labels, intended for careful and 
economical people, which bear no name of a wine 
at all, but a place wherein a little label could be 
slipped, on which the name of the wine could be 
carefully printed by its owner, and the same label 
would do for different wines on different occasions. 

Chased upon a few of the labels are figures of 
men engaged in wine pressing, or in gathering 


DECANTER LABELS 219 


grapes ; occasionally there are miniature Bacchi 
represented upon them, some of whom appear to 
have lingered too long at the wine-press ; and yet 
again, on others, there are large baskets repre- 
sented—the type of basket still used in Southern 
and Central France for gathering up _ the 
grapes. | 

Some people had their crests and their coats of 
arms upon the labels, showing that they were 
expressly made for them, and that they were 
proud that the fact should be recognised—one, a 
fine Madeira label, appearing to represent a 
coronet. In the collection there are also some 
beautiful examples of decanter labels that are 
simply single letters, M, C, or G (large capitals), 
beautifully chased and highly ornate, the decora- 
tion generally introducing grapes in some form or 
other; the M could have been used for Madeira, 
Malaga, Marsala, Mountain, Malmsey, or Moselle, 
or even for that curious wine called Masdeu, which 
came from the Roussillon, and which is a wine 
that we are told was at one time imported as port. 
In was, by the way, a rather curious thing to find 
in both these collections many labels bearing 
names referring to wines about which no one knows 
very much at the present day. We do not often 
meet with Hermitage in the wine merchant’s lists, 
although this wine from the Céte du Rhéne has 
recently come back into them in connection with 
the increasing demand there is for French rather 


220 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


than for German wines. I have already referred 
to Masdeu, and there is “Styne” for Stein Hock; 
Cote Réte, a wine that is imported from near to 
Lyons ; Termo, which is a Portuguese white wine, 
and which sometimes appears on the list as 
Termeau; Sercial, which is a Madeira wine, and 
others. 

One also finds labels for Canary, Cyprus, Tent, 
Sack, and Malaga, all wines that are little known 
at the present day. The labels show us what in 
the eighteenth century were the favourite wines. 
George IV was much attached to sherry, and 
there are more sherry labels than any others. 
Some of them are marked “‘ Brown Sherry,’ others 
‘““Amontillado’’ (that is to say, the mountain 
wine grown at Montilla, near to Cordoba), but 
the majority just “‘ Sherry ”’ alone. 

The next favourite wine was Madeira—and there 
must have been a very large quantity of it con- 
sumed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth 
centuries—and next, of course, comes Port; and 
one label from Stafford House, evidently made for 
the lover of a particularly precious wine, bears 
the words “ Beeswing Port’ upon it. Oddly 
enough, claret is spelt in two or three different 
ways upon the labels; sometimes it appears as 
‘“Clarete,’”’ sometimes “‘ Clarett,’’ occasionally 
‘‘Clarret,’’ and one label reads ‘‘ After-dinner 
Claret,’ while the port labels are sometimes 
written as ‘‘ Porto,’’ sometimes as ‘‘ White Port,” — 


DECANTER LABELS 221 


sometimes as ‘‘ Red Port,’ and sometimes the 
latter is abbreviated to “ R. Port.” 

Champagne is spelled in all sorts of different 
ways on the labels—‘‘ Champaine,”’ “‘ Champain,”’ 
and “‘ Champaign ’’—and Sauterne sometimes has 
the final “‘ e *’ and sometimes is without it. 

The labels are not all silver. In both collections 
there are some mother-of-pearl ones, and, what 
are rarer still, there are some beautiful ones of 
Battersea enamel. I once saw in a friend’s house 
an exceedingly rare set of three labels, in pink 
Battersea enamel, with the inscriptions in black 
for port, sherry, and claret; and I also saw a 
very fine pink Battersea one, with decorations of 
bunches of grapes, the owner's crest at the upper 
part, and the inscription “‘ White Port,’’ but the 
Battersea enamel labels are the rarest of all, and 
next to these, perhaps, are the delightful ones 
made of mother-of-pearl, and which must have 
looked very pretty, hanging upon the decanters. 
About some of the names on them it is not easy 
to speak for certain. ‘‘ Vidonia’’ is an unusual 
word to find. ‘“‘Sayes”’ is another; it has been 
suggested that this should be “ Scyes,’’ and have 
reference to an Alsace-Lorraine wine, and 
“Vidonia’’ almost certainly refers to a Canary 
wine, coming from ghee and not imported 
at the present time. 

Liqueurs were also labelled in the same way ; 


93 


there is one label having simply “ Liquer upon 


222 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


it, another Curacoa, spelled in a very odd fashion 
—‘ Currosos,”’ and one finds “‘ Ratifee,’”’ ““ Cherry 
Brandy,” ‘‘ Kummell,”’ and “ Maraschino,”’ while 
the British wines are represented in the collection 
by labels bearing the words “ Shrub,” “ Elder,” 
“ Ginger,’’ ‘‘ Cowslip,”’ “‘ Orange,’’ and “ Raisin.”’ 
There are cider labels, but the word as a rule is 
spelled ‘‘ Cyder.’’ Some of the labels are shell- 
shaped, some very good ones are in the shape of 
a large crescent, many are square, some are formed 
of the letters of the word combined in a pretty 
monogram, as, for example, one which represents 
the word “ claret,’’ others take the form of twisted 
ribbons, sometimes tied up in bow fashion, some- 
times arranged in a twist. Some of the labels are 
rectangular, others are square. Sometimes they 
have beautiful decorated borders, and at other 
times the borders are quite simple and plain. In 
date, about the earliest is 1738, and they go on, 
down to the beginning of the nineteenth century. 
There are labels, of course, still being made, but 
I am only dealing with the old ones, and very 
pretty many of them must have looked on the 
decanters then in use. It strikes one, by the way, 
as being odd to find so many champagne labels, 
but it was the custom to decant champagne, and 
not to bring it to the table in bottles ; even now, 
this habit is always adopted at the Royal table, 
and at the tables of many of the older members 
of the aristocracy. There is one old-fashioned 


DECANTER LABELS 223 


table, at which I have sat on many occasions, on 
which champagne is invariably served in tall, 
narrow-mouthed glass jugs, and the silver label 
hangs round the jug, and looks very pretty. 
Taken altogether, wine labels form very 
attractive objects to collect. They are of infinite 
variety and dainty charm. They have the advan- 
tage of being delightful things to use in one’s 
house, and a group of them, in a glass case, is a 
very pleasant thing to possess. 


CHAPTER XXX 


STRAW MARQUETERIE 


N the City of Peterborough, close to the 
Cathedral, is a small museum, and in one 
room, crowded together with insufficient 

space for careful scrutiny, is a collection, the 
finest in England, of about a hundred and seventy 
pieces of straw marqueterie work, made at the 
great prison that stood near to Stilton at Norman 
Cross, and which lasted from 1796 to 1816. In 
this prison, specially built for its purpose, and 
wholly destroyed when that purpose was at an 
end, were confined, during the Napoleonic Wars, 
some six thousand prisoners. 

Their allowances were very meagre, and they 
were allowed to increase them by their own handi- 
work. There was a market held in the prison 
yard, and people used to attend there, and pur- 
chase from the prisoners the exquisite straw 
marqueterie work, so-called, for which they were 
responsible. It was not strictly marqueterie, 
because, although pieces of straw, dyed in very 
clever fashion in many colours, formed exquisite 
designs, the straw-work was only attached to the 
wood and not inlaid as, strictly speaking, mar- 


224 


STRAW MARQUETERIE 225 


queterie should be; but the result was delightful, 
and in this museum there are work-boxes and 
cabinets, desks, tea-caddies, dressing-cases, patch- 
boxes, holders for needles, pins and knitting- 
needles, hand fire-screens, snuff-boxes and watch- 
stands, holders for silk, picture frames, cases for 
telescopes and domino boxes, and all kinds of 
pieces of joinery work, decorated in amazing 
fashion by these French prisoners, with the 
coloured straw which they arranged so cleverly. 

In some instances, the purchasers themselves 
supplied the wood, or even the box or cabinet, 
and the straw-work was done by the prisoners, 
but the names of only six men out of the six 
thousand have been handed down. Fortunately, 
we know the name of the man who was responsible 
for the best of the marqueterie pictures, amongst 
which the view of Peterborough Cathedral itself 
stands out supreme, and is by far the finest 
example of straw-work in the museum. That 
was done by a man nanied Jean de la Porte, and 
five other pieces are signed by Grieg, Ruibout, 
Corn, Godfrow and Jacques Courny. : 

It is said that sometimes at the market as 
much as two hundred pounds changed hands, so 
eager were the prisoners to sell and the people 
round about to buy, and so delightful was the 
work. The money, of course, was divided amongst 
the men who had done the work, and, in some 


instances, hoarded until the hoped-for day of 
P 


226 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


release should come; but very frequently it was 
sent over for safe keeping to France by accredited 
agents, and put away by the prisoner, hoping 
that it might be useful for his family or himself 
when he came back to his native country. Con- 
temporary letters speak often of this market, 
especially in 1818, and sometimes it was held on 
a Sunday. | 

It will be remembered, of course, that the 
prisoners had large quantities of straw at their 
disposal, because their beds were made entirely 
of that material, and no doubt they could obtain 
finer straw by arrangement with their warders. 
How they got their dyes no one quite knows. 
The popular idea that the browns were stained 
with tea and coffee falls to the ground when we 
know from the records that neither of these 
beverages were served out to them. Probably 
there were bottles of dyes to be obtained, and 
perhaps some of the colours were made by the 
prisoners themselves from vegetables. At one 
time the prisoners also did a great deal of straw 
plait work, but eventually that was forbidden, 
because straw plait was taxed in 1802, and their 
work would have entered into competition with 
that of the plait-makers of Bedfordshire. Never- 
theless, they did continue to do straw-plait work, 
and even to make hats and bonnets, but these 
had to be smuggled out, and there was uate a 
- trade in this smuggling. 


‘WOESO HONOMOMNALAd AHL NWO ‘MUO M, MVULS AO SHIMNVXA AAA T 








STRAW MARQUETERIE 227 


They were expressly forbidden to undersell the 
people round about, and hence, perhaps, the 
Origin of this straw marqueterie work, which was 
not otherwise made in the neighbourhood, and 
consequently entered into no competition with 
local trade. The men used to make slippers and 
shoes, and were permitted to use list, but for- 
bidden leather, for the same sort of reason. 

We know very much what the prison was like, 
because in Paris, in Les Invalides, there is a 
wonderful model of it, made by one of the prisoners 
-and there are various plans of it still remaining, 
not only in Peterborough, but in other places. 
A part of its wall still stands, but on the site it 
occupied there is now an important memorial to 
all the prisoners who died in this gaol, both 
French and Dutch, and the number was, un- 
fortunately, a very large percentage. There were 
other similar prison-houses—one in Surrey, another 
in Falmouth, and others in various parts of the 
country—and in most of them straw marqueterie 
work seems to have been done, probably the 
result of the transfer of prisoners from one jail 
to another, when the details concerning such 
labour were carried on to other prisoners; and 
we, a hundred years after the prisoners and their 
prison have vanished from Norman Cross, can 
only marvel at the skill and patient perseverance 
which accomplished such exquisite work under 
such very difficult conditions. It was, of course, 


228 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


only a proportion of the prisoners who actually 
did the work, but it has been stated that some- 
times there were several hundreds fitting to- 
gether the pieces of this wonderful straw-work, 
and by far the largest proportion of the pieces 
of straw marqueterie came from this particular 
prison at Norman Cross, the number of pieces 
executed at the other provincial prisons being 
negligible, in comparison with that = near 
Peterborough. 

Nowadays examples of French prisoners’ straw 
marqueterie are precious; boxes, cabinets and 
pictures, whenever they come into the market, 
fetch substantial sums ; but there are surely many 
persons in Huntingdonshire, Rutland, and there- 
abouts, who still have examples of this graceful 
work, to which, perchance, they have attached 
little importance. The Peterborough museum is 
the place in which to study it, but there are 
several collectors who are eager to acquire ex- 
amples of the work, especially of the pictures, 
one of which is illustrated in Dr. Walker’s im- 
portant book on the prison, to which all who. 
collect straw marqueterie have to go for in- 
formation. He also illustrates a charming work- 
box and two fire-screens, objects of considerable 
beauty, and it is well to draw attention to a 
very distinctive kind of decoration, highly appre- 
ciated by collectors and, perhaps, not hitherto 
sufficiently well known. 


STRAW MARQUETERIE 229 


One of the prisoners invented a method of 
splitting the straw, and devised a little wheel-like 
tool, with a spiked centre and four tiny knives, 
by which the straw was split up neatly and 
accurately into the sizes required. I have a 
distinct remembrance, as a child, of finding one 
of these straw splitters in the drawer of a cabinet 
decorated at Norman Cross, and testing it, with 
great admiration of its ingenuity. These same 
tools were made with two, three and even five 
and six knives. J have examples of them all, but 
there was a wooden tool resembling a clock case 
which had various sets of knives in it, and I have 
never yet been able to obtain one of these 
although I remember seeing it in use half a 
century ago. 


CHAPTER XXXI 


BELLS 


London auction-rooms lately. The cir- 

cumstance is very unusual. Very rarely 
indeed are church bells the object of auction 
sales, and I am inclined to think that, if it could 
be known from which church a bell has been | 
taken, the return of it could be demanded. | 

I rather think, like parish registers, church bells 
cannot be sold in what may be called ‘ market 
overt.”’ This one is, so I hear, believed to have 
come from a church which has been wholly 
destroyed. 

I saw another, some time ago, in a nobleman’s 
house, which had also come from a church that 
had been pulled down, and is now swung as a 
dinner bell. 

I suppose there are no collectors of church bells 
because, practically, there are none to be had; 
but there is a considerable demand for other 
kinds of bells. For example, those beautiful sets 
of four or five that were put on the leading horse 
of a team, and were known as team bells, and 
by which the approach of horses in a long narrow 


230 


, N old church bell was sold at one of the - 


BELLS 231 


lane was heralded, are in great demand, and very 
charming dinner bells they make. They are often 
of beautiful sound, and made of really good 
metal. There is a set, I am told, at Kingston, in 
the museum, and I have seen others. | 

Then there are sheep bells, generally circular, 
sometimes made of bronze, occasionally quite 
ancient, and at times having initials or dates 
upon them. In Austria and Switzerland they and 
the somewhat larger cow bells are rectangular— 
more like that wonderful St. Patrick’s bell in the 
Dublin Museum. The old English sheep bells 
are often very harmonious in tone, and are 
pleasant things to use, mounted up for handling. 
The foreign ones are not so harmonious, they are 
more shrill; but in amongst the mountains their 
sound is very pleasant. 

We keep up curious customs with Seebtdet to 
bells—the Pancake Bell, rung on Shrove Tuesday 
in some places, Harvest Bells and Market Bells, 
the solemn Passing Bell, the alarming Fire Bell, 
and, in churches, the Sanctus Bell. There is 
a beautiful old Sanctus Bell in a Catholic church 
in Surrey, that was stolen once, together with 
two or there other treasures from the church. 
The country people tell you that the bell per- 
sisted in ringing, and so the thief threw the 
treasures away, and the bell went on ringing till 
it was found and restored to its place. It cer- 
tainly did go away from the church, and it 


232 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


certainly is back there now; so much of the 
story I know is true. 

I saw a beautiful silver Sanctus Bell a little 
while ago on a dinner table. It was not of the 
kind that hung in the belfry, but such as the 
altar-boy uses on the steps. It was Spanish, and 
had come from some fine church, no doubt, but 
now put to quite different purposes. 

There was a splendid silver bell sold at the 
Strawberry Hill sale in 1842, which Walpole said 
had been made for Pope Clement VII by Ben- 
venuto Cellini, and had come from Parma into 
the possession of Lord Rockingham, from whom 
Walpole had obtained it. After the Strawberry 
Hill sale it passed into the possession of Baron 
Ferdinand de Rothschild. It is absolutely en- 
crusted with beautiful ornamentation, chased in 
most marvellous fashion, but is not now attri- 
buted to Cellini. It is probably German and 
very likely made by Jamnitzer, who died in 
Nuremberg in 1585. There is a wonderful bell 
that belonged to Queen Mary Stuart and, later on, 
to Mr. Bruce, of Kennet. It has the Royal Arms 
of Scotland upon it, the Greek monogram for the 
name of our Lord, and various Latin inscriptions, 
one of them saying that the Queen used it to 
summon her attendants, and, perhaps, that also 
was originally made for ecclesiastical purposes. 
It was bequeathed by the Queen, in her will of 
February, 1577, to her secretary Nau, and in 


BELLS 233 


1587 it appears in the inventory of the things 
that were at Fotheringay Castle. It is a very 
beautiful bell, and another very fine one is believed 
to be at Windsor, and belonged to Queen Anne 
Boleyn. 

There are two interesting medieval bells in 
the British Museum—one which came from 
Pickering, and is a fourteenth-century bell en- 
graved with a crucifix and saints; the other, a 
Flemish bell, dated 1574 and having upon it the 
maker’s name. 

Some delightful bronze bells have appeared 
more than once in sales; early Italian work, 
made very likely at Padua, and one was certainly 
the work of Riccio, and fetched several hundreds 
of pounds. Really fine bronze bells are great 
treasures, and these were generally made for 
domestic use, the altar bells being, as a rule, 
silver or very fine bronze. 

The art of bell-founding is ancient, and very 
good bells have always been made in this country. 
One of the firms of bell-makers, Mears, goes back 
to 1570 in direct succession, and two other notable 
firms—Warner’s of London and Taylor’s of 
Loughborough—are also very ancient firms. I 
believe the earliest dated church bell in England 
is the one at Duncton, of 1369; there are a great 
many bells in belfries of the sixteenth century. 

If collectors cannot obtain church bells, they 
can do something which is almost as interesting— 


234 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


climb up the belfries and make rubbings of the 
inscriptions and dates upon the church bells. 
Very often, in describing the possessions of a 
church, the bells are forgotten, and yet they are 
often as old as anything in the church, sometimes © 
contemporary with the oldest part of the building 
itself. There are various books on the church 
bells of different countries, and they give fasci- 
nating reading, specially if the compiler has been 
successful enough to dig up information con- 
cerning the bells from the makers, or about those — 
persons who gave the bells. 

In many instances, church bells and altar bells 
have the names of the donors upon them, some- 
times accompanied by prayers for the repose of 
their souls, because the bells are given to the 
glory of God, and were always the subject of 
special services, which the Catholic Church still 
retains when she sprinkles and blesses new bells 
intended for a church. 

In examining church bells, care must be taken 
not to overlook the little bell which often hangs 
in quite another part of the church, and which 
was rung at the Elevation, especially as at times - 
it is the oldest bell in the church, and the collector 
of bell rubbings and bell inscriptions must be a 
person who is cool and level-headed, because he 
may have to climb very rickety ladders and walk 
about over very old woodwork, in search of 
information which the belfry may contain. 


BELLS a 938 

Curfew bells are still rung in many parishes in 
England, at one place, Wallingford, it is said. 
the practice has never ceased since the Conquest, 
and that the bell on which it is rung belongs to 
an Anglo-Saxon period. Certainly, in many 
places curfew is rung on very ancient bells, and 
church bells may be regarded as almost indes- 
tructible; the only thing that can injure them 
is when the church catches fire, and the woodwork 
of the belfry is burned, and the bells fall to the 
ground: that has happened sometimes. 

‘The sound of bells may be a great joy; on the 
other hand, if one is too near the church, and 
there are enthusiastic campanologists in the 
parish, they may be a terrible nuisance, but 
there is no such bell-ringing in England as there 
is in Russia. The Russians are very fond of 
bells, and tune them to all kinds of notes, and 
very melodious are the Russian bells. Their 
largest bell stands outside the Kremlin, and can- 
not be used, because an unfortunate accident has 
cracked it, but they have many splendid bells, 
with glorious, rich, deep notes. 

Two curious bells that I saw a little while ago 
had come from a canopy that had been held by 
the Barons of the Cinque Ports over George III 
at his coronation, and had come down in descent 
from the posterity of one of those Barons. They 
were unusual in shape and in tone. The Barons, 
I believe, still are summoned to the coronation, 


236 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


but the days of the canopy with its pendent bells 
are past. 

In a garden in Cornwall, I saw suspended a 
fine bronze ship bell, almost the only thing that 
had been saved from a wreck ; and there are several 
ship bells to be seen in several local museums in 
places down by the sea coast, especially in the 
west of England. One bell-metal bell, shining 
resplendent as though it was made of gold, adorns 
the hall of a ship owner’s seaside residence ; and, 
curiously enough, quite close to him, to point 
out a dangerous shoal, swings one of those mono- 
tonous bell-buoys, with its dreary, never-ceasing 
note. 


CHAPTER XXXII 


BONBONNIERES 


NUFFBOXES and bonbonniéres are often 
S confused one with the other, but this 
should not be the case, The easiest 
method to determine concerning them is to 
examine the hinges. These, in French boxes, 
are made with peculiar care and skill, where a 
snuffbox is concerned, in order that no snuff 
should find its way, either into the mechanism 
of the hinge or out into the pocket where the 
snuffbox lies; and if a box when shut up, forces 
out a little puff of air, and closes with extreme 
precision, it is almost certainly a snuffbox. There 
was no such particular attention given to the bon- 
bonniéres, although they closed quite well, and 
kept back the air to a great extent from their 
contents. Then the bonbonniére was often made 
of a material that was particularly precious and 
fragile, because it was more usually intended for 
standing on the table than was the snuffbox. 

The finest bonbonniére of modern times known 
to me was the one which came into the market 
last May. It had originally belonged to Mr. 
Alfred de Rothschild, and was of Sévres porcelain, 

237 


238 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


decorated with paintings of very high quality, no 
doubt by Dodin after Boucher, and the gold 
mounts, beautifully made, were signed by the 
king’s jewellers, Fossin et Fils. The box was a 
very wonderful piece of work, the paintings de- 
lightful, the gold exquisitely carved and chased, 
and it fetched four thousand pounds. With it 
were sold several other boxes, one or two of which 
were most certainly snuffboxes, and others just 
as surely intended for bonbonnieres. 

I wonder what kind of confectionery these boxes 
used to contain? Certainly not chocolates such 
as we have at present: the French bonbonniére 
would only hold two or three of the modern 
chocolates, and until Menier began to start his 
important chocolate industry in the nineteenth 
century, there was no special trade in chocolate 
in France. In the very early part of that century 
his father was making the solid chocolate, and he 
improved and increased the manufactory. 

We have our words “‘ comfit ” and “ lozenge ” 
from the French, and the original lozenges were _ 
of what we now term a lozenge shape, a pointed 
diamond, but the notion of combining drugs with 
sugar for lozenges is quite a recent one, and the _ 
earliest lozenges were simply scented. The comfit 
was a dry sweet, and in all probability the oldest 
sweetmeats of the present day are the sugared 
almonds and the sugared coriander seeds which 
children know as sugar-plums or caraway comfits. 


BONBONNIERES 239 


These bonbonniéres, it may be expected, con- 
tained sweetmeats of that kind, certainly dry and 
probably rather hard, and what are known as 
white Scottish sweets, which include cloves covered 
with hard white sugar, are the direct descendants 
of the kind of French confectionery they held. 
It was introduced into Scotland in Mary Queen of 
Scots’ time, and this is just another example of 
the way in which Scotland preserves many French 
habits, words and phrases which she has enshrined 
in her language and manners, and which still 
remain as evidence of the close connection that 
formerly existed between the two countries. 

There are many delightful gold bon-bon boxes 
to be found, some of them set with enamel, either 
a portrait or a tiny landscape. 

There were silver ones also, although these are 
not so common. Then, in England, there were 
many such boxes made of enamel, produced both 
at Battersea and at Bilston. The potteries of 
Chelsea, Derby, Bristol, Worcester, and other 
places, also made porcelain boxes, mounted in 
metal, in which dry sweetmeats were kept, and 
there are many to be found of Capo di Monti 
ware, some. of wnich are quite large caskets to 
stand on the table. 

These also were made both at Dresden and in 
Vienna, and are always said to have been originally 
produced to hold the candied fruits that for many 
generations have been made at Grasse and at 


240 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


various other places along the maritime coast of 
France and Italy, and even more extensively in 
sicily. There, quite big boxes as large as tea- 
caddies are to be found, both of Italian pottery 
and of Capo di Monti porcelain, and these, packed 
with the candied fruits of Sicily, were no doubt 
very acceptable presents. 

The porcelain boxes of China or Japan in some 
cases contained tea, in others spice. The Dutch, 
to whom we were at one time indebted for almost 
all our spice, imported a good deal of it in 
lacquer boxes, and in similar boxes made of 
porcelain, and these were regarded as large 
bonbonniéres, holding most acceptable gifts of 
spices, dried ginger, and various other Oriental 
dainties. 

What exactly the glass bonbonniéres were for 
one hardly knows. They must have been very 
fragile ; only a few really old ones have survived ; 
there were some creamy ones made in Bristol, and 
perhaps they were toilet boxes, or to hold powder 
and other adjuncts for the toilet-table. The 
small, square Chinese glass boxes were perhaps 
for snuff, but that is not certain, because snuff, 
as a rule, was contained in small bottles. The 
special demand, however, is for the French bon- 
bonniéres, often of gold, generally beautifully 
made and daintily decorated, and in the extrava- 
gant days that preceded the Revolution, there 
were large numbers of them made for presents, 


BONBONNIERES 241 


and very substantial sums were paid (or at least 
in some cases owed) for them. 

These, however, are beyond the reach of most 
collectors, but tortoiseshell ones are often to be 
found, and the prettiest are ornamented in spots 
of gold, in what is known as piqué work. Then 
there are the eighteenth-century silver bonbon 
boxes, decorated in repoussé, and a much larger 
variety of shapes made in Holland, some quite 
tiny, square, canister-shaped ones, often called 
patch-boxes, but certainly not for patches, be- 
cause they are too small to enable one to draw 
out the patch by putting two fingers into the 
box, and moreover, too deep; patch-boxes are 
shallower things, and generally oval, so that the 
two fingers can go easily into it. Moreover, there 
are some circular china ones made at the less 
important Staffordshire potteries, often quite 
pretty, and sometimes with a portrait upon them ; 
and I have seen them made of shell and of ivory, 
while there are many of Wedgwood, not the toilet 
boxes with the loose Wedgwood lid, but mounted 
in metal and cleverly hinged. There are also 
boxes of a French red enamel, and these are some- 
times lined with tortoiseshell, and occasionally 
mounted with fine chased ormolu work. 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


LOWESTOFT WARE 


LMOST every amateur collection of English 
A porcelain, whether large or small, con- 
tains some pieces which the owner calls 
‘““ Lowestoft ware.’’ There are fine tall mugs or 
punch bowls, charmingly decorated in wreaths of 
flowers, generally of a pink hue, and always in- 
cluding roses, or there are portions of tea-services, 
notably canisters, stranger-dishes, or cups and 
Saucers, ornamented with monograms, crests or 
coats of arms, and having simple, graceful borders. 
One is told, as a rule, that ware decorated with 
the pink rose was painted at Lowestoft, and one 
is generally informed either that there was a 
factory at Lowestoft for the production of this 
ware, or, perhaps, by another collector, that 
plain Oriental china was imported into England 
in large quantities, and decorated at Lowestoft 
for different persons, with their crest, monogram, 
or arms. | 
It does not seem to strike the amateur collector 
that there are no tea services to be found of the 
plain ware before the decoration was put on at 


Lowestoft, such as there certainly would be if 
242 


LOWESTOFT WARE 243 


quantities of this Oriental ware came into England 
and were sent to Lowestoft to be decorated. 
Moreover, a careful examination of the ware in 
question shows that it so closely resembles Oriental 
china that it must certainly have been made in 
the East, and in such case, why not decorated in 
the place in which it was made ? 

The doubts thrown upon the story led for a 
while to the impression that perhaps there was 
no factory at all at Lowestoft, and that all that 
had been declared by Chaffers and other writers 
to be Lowestoft decorated ware was Oriental ; 
but in December, 1902, the question was cleared 
up, and it is now generally accepted that the 
armorial china, vast quantities of which were 
brought over to England by officials of the East 
India Company, was not only made, but also 
decorated in the East. 

It is almost sure that the drawings of the arms 
or the monograms were prepared in England, 
and were handed to the Eastern artists for them 
to copy : generally the copies are accurate. Some- 
times there are curious little errors, such as only 
an Eastern artist would make, but the ware was 
not English, nor was the decoration done in this 
country. 

In Lowestoft there was, however, a factory. 
An account of this factory in 1757 was given in 
the “‘ History of Lowestoft,” which was published 
in 1790. The works gave employment to some 


244 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


sixty or seventy men, and they were sufficiently 
important to render necessary an agency and 
warehouse in London, but in 1803 the pottery 
was closed down, and later on the premises were 
used as a malting house by Messrs. Morse, of the 
- Crown Brewery, and it was when they altered one 
of their kilns that fragments of china, plaster 
moulds, and various other things were found, 
which cleared up the whole question as to the 
Lowestoft factory. 

There has been for a long time, in the collection 
of a Mr. Seago, a series of pieces of Lowestoft 
ware, things which he had bought from Robert 
Browne, great-grandson of the original potter in 
the place, and these pieces eventually passed into 
the collection of Mr. Frederick Crisp, who illus- 
trated most of them in a privately prepared 
catalogue, and who, a year later, issued another 
privately printed book, with illustrations of the 
factory, and of all the various moulds which had ° 
been found on this site. We do, therefore, know 
for certain something about the Lowestoft ware. 

It was, as arule, blue and white, but there were 
some pieces decorated with flowers, even including 
the well-known roses, and with armorial bearings, 
although very different in such detail from the 
pieces of Oriental ware so decorated which for 
a long time masqueraded under the name of 
Lowestoft. The ware was not specially beautiful, 
nor particularly interesting. It was a local china, 


LOWESTOFT WARE 245 


very popular in the immediate district. Several 
pieces had views of Lowestoft Church upon them. 
Others such inscriptions as “‘ A Trifle from Lowe- 
stoft,” or ‘“ A Present from Lowestoft,’’ and one 
quite notable mug, bears the arms of the Black- 
smiths’ Company. 

There were certainly some tea canisters, some 
sprinkler dishes, and some tea-pots, and the shape 
of both the tea canisters and the tea-pots was 
undoubtedly derived from Oriental ware, but the 
one unusual feature of Lowestoft ware was 
that the factory produced a series of what were 
called “‘ birth tablets,’ circular pieces of ware, 
measuring from two and a half inches diameter up 
to five inches in diameter, recording the birth of 
local people, and several of these with the names 
of such persons as Samuel Wright, Robert Rope, 
Mary Ward, Sarah Mason, Jonathan Downing, 
and others, are illustrated in Mr. Crisp’s volume. 
The spelling is erratic and eccentric, the lettering 
always clear, but not very good, and the pieces 
were issued in 1772, 1775, 1788, 1793 and 1796, 
and other years. They constitute the really 
remarkable pieces made at Lowestoft, and 
collectors are very eager to get hold of them. 

It is also a curious feature of that ware that on 
many pieces are initials, and even dates. For 
instance, on the bottom of the Blacksmiths’ mug 
appears the inscription ‘‘ James and Sarah Hacon, 
1775,’ on a round flat bottle are the initials, 


246 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


‘“T.B.,” and the date 1778. On the bottom of 
one of the mugs is the name Hughes, with the date 
September 4th, 1766, and on one of the tea-pots 
are the initials of the same man, with the date 
1761. Another tea-pot is inscribed “ Elizabeth 
Johnson, February 5th, 1768,” and a water- 
bottle, “‘ Maria Ann Hoyler, 1770,” while the tea- 
pot with Lowestoft Church on it has the initials 
S.C.,”’ which stand for “ Sarah Crisp,” and it 
bears the date 1767. A cup and saucer are 
inscribed “‘ Maria Crowfoot, 1778,” and another 
one has no name upon it, but bears the date 
January 27th, 1796, so that, from these dates, 
we know the period in which the Lowestoft factory 
executed its best pieces, and we also gather the 
impression that it was very much of a family 
affair, and that tea-pots and birth tablets, cups 
and saucers and mugs, were made for local people, 
or for those who were more or less connected in 
intimate relationship with the proprietor of the 
factory, or with the potters who worked in it. 
All that gives to genuine Lowestoft ware a eye 
and unusual interest. 

Mr. Crisp purchased what he could from the 
various dealers, as well as from Mr. Seago, but 
he was convinced that there were more pieces in 
existence, and it is important to discover some of 
these missing pieces. Probably there are houses 
round about Lowestoft that still cherish, without 
knowing very much about them, examples of this 


LOWESTOFT WARE 247 


soft paste porcelain from a pottery which had a 
very small production, and such pieces of ware 
collectors would be glad to acquire. 

The discovery in 1902 was extremely important, 
because it cleared up all sorts of theories and ideas, 
and enabled the historian of English ware to have 
a definite series of data upon which to base the 
information he possessed concerning this little- 
known pottery. 

It also proved that Chaffers, in his standard 
book, had jumped to conclusions that were not 
well founded, and that his statements needed the 
correction which Litchfield, in his later edition, 
gave. 


CHAPTER XXXIV 


LETTER-WEIGHTS AND DOOR-PORTERS 


seeing, when quite a small boy, at the 

extreme end, a stall full of interesting 
things made of glass. The old woman who kept 
it came from Stourbridge, and, as a child, I used 
to delight in the letter-weights, composed of canes 
of various coloured glass, forming intricate decora- 
tion, resembling beautiful anemones, which she 
used to sell, and in the balls full of water, which 
contained, as a rule, a figure of a man with an 
umbrella. On shaking these balls a heavy 
snowstorm appeared, and one then realised the 
idea of the man with the umbrella. In a few 
moments the particles of white that were 
contained in the ball fell to its base again, and 
then one had to shake it up, to produce another 
snowstorm. 

My grandfather had on his writing-table many 
of the letter-weights which he bought from this old 
woman, mostly circular, but some of them square. 
He gave me a couple, but they have gone the way 
of most children’s toys. At the same stall the old 


woman had green glass door-porters of various 
248 


() the old Chain Pier at Brighton, I remember 


LETTER-WEIGHTS AND DOOR-PORTERS 249 


shapes, some tall and pointed, in which, super- 
imposed, one on the other, were a series of flowers, 
flecked with tiny air-bubbles, and rising out of a 
kind of flower-pot. Others were circular, and 
appeared to be full of water, but were really 
crowded with bubbles of air, and in some there 
were convolvuli, growing out of what appeared 
to be a grassy plat. 

These also were found in my grandfather’s 
house, and were always a joy to me, when I 
wondered how in the name of fortune the flowers 
were deposited within the green lumps of glass. 

On my grandmother’s dressing-table, obtained 
from the same stall was a set of toilet objects, 
two or three scent-bottles, and a ring tray, and, 
I believe, an inkstand, all of which had this 
Millefiori work at the base of them, and I have 
been told that, so common were the glass paper- 
weights made by the workmen in the kilns at 
Stourbridge in their spare time, and for their own 
amusement, that at one time, they were orna- 
ments in their gardens, and even edgings to their 
garden paths. 

Recently, in the house of an old friend, I came 
across, to my great delight, several examples of 
these charming Millefiori letter-weights, and I 
gathered that he had given some attention to 
them, and he had two or three that were dated 
1848. He told me that all the dated ones that he 
had ever seen had, in conjunction with the dates, 


250 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


some figures of animals, which, it would appear, 
were a sort of mark of the workmen who had 
made them. | 

Lately, I have seen the largest collection, 
I suppose, in existence, of this kind of glass, and 
I find there are four dates known to exist: 1845, 
1846, 1847, and 1848, and that some of the letter- 
weights of 1847 have the initial “ B,’”’ while there 
are others of 1848 that are also marked “ H,”’ 
and yet others of that date that are marked 
“$.L.” Nobody at present, however, has been 
able to determine whose these initials are. 

It surely should not be impossible, in the 
neighbourhood of Stourbridge, where the letter- 
weights were certainly made, to find out who were 
the clever workmen whose names are represented 
by the H, the B, and the S.L., because men 
who lived in ’47 and ’48, and who made this sort 
of work, as it was certainly made for the ‘51 
Exhibition, must surely be remembered, and their 
children are probably still living. There was a 
great demand at the time of the 1851 Exhibition 
for this very charming Millefiori work, some 
examples of which in colour appeared in The © 
Connotsseur in the December number for 1920, 
and it was probably about that time that the 
various bottles were made which have this floral 
decoration in their bases or their knobs. 

There were also bell-pulls made of it, large 
ball ends for portiére rods, handles for wardrobes, 


"gtgi qayi1vda ‘“MAd HLIM GHINNINdS SYAMOTA 
*LHOIAM-YAdVg IMOIMATIIYA, SSVT4) TOLSLAG ONINIVINOO LHOIEM-aadVd SSV1X) NAWNO VV 








ss 





_LETTER-WEIGHTS AND DOOR-PORTERS 251 


door handles, ink-pots, eggs to be used in the heel 
of a stocking when it was being darned, and even 
the handles of knives, forks and spoons, because, 
in a celebrated collection I have just seen there 
was a complete set of dessert knives and forks and 
spoons, with handles covered with this anemone- 
like decoration in colour. 

The door-porters perhaps belong to a rather 
earlier age, but even those must have been still 
in process of manufacture when I was a tiny boy, 
because those which I saw on the stall at Brighton 
Chain Pier varied from month to month, and 
when one was bought, another speedily took its 
place. 

A few years ago, in buying some Bristol and 
Nailsea glass, I bought a rough lump of the glass 
that was used in the preparation of these door- 
porters, and which had evidently been put aside, 
perhaps as waste. The skill involved in producing 
them must have been very considerable, especially 
in those of the superimposed flowers, because they 
had to be very dexterously set in, one above the 
other, and then the whole thing sealed up with 
extreme accuracy, a certain amount of air being 
left in, which rests on the leaves of the flowers and 
produces a delightful effect. 

The big, square lumps of the Millefiori work are 
not often to be met with now, but are amongst 
the most important to the collector; one cube 
that I have seen has the date 1845 in about a 


252 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING — 


dozen different places, the figures most delicately 
produced in black and white, and standing out 
quite clearly. Another paper-weight of the same 
date is made like a large ball, with a curved top 
and a flattened base. Some of them are made of 
what is called ‘‘ Latticinio’’ work, white canes of 
glass cleverly twisted together, something like the 
canes that one finds in the stems of the eighteenth- 
century wine-glasses, and this is associated with 
floral mosaics of extreme beauty. 

There are all sorts of things in glass that one can 
collect, but few things that are more delightful in 
colour, and possessed of greater charm, than these 
Millefiori letter-weights. Some of the glass orna- 
ments made by Apsley Pellatt, with portrait 
medallions on them, in silver lustre, are extremely 
beautiful, and those are not often to be seen now, 
but the letter-weights must have been made in such 
large numbers that it surely ought not to be 
' difficult to form a collection of them. 

The scent bottles, in some instances, could have 
held very little scent, and the mosaics were so 
disposed on the bottom of the bottle that they 
looked as though they were loose in it, and it was 
suggested that, if one poured out the eau-de- 
Cologne, one could get at these pieces of loose 
mosaic. It was soon found, however, that the 
bottle was a kind of puzzle bottle, only holding 
perhaps a teaspoonful of clear spirit, and when 
one removed that, one found that the mosaic was 


LETTER-WEIGHTS AND DOOR-PORTERS 253 


by no means loose, but was actually part of the 
bottle, although, at first sight, it seemed to be 
floating at the base of the fluid. 

As to the snowstorms, they varied in design: 
sometimes they contained a cottage, sometimes 
Little Red Ridinghood with her dog, sometimes 
two or three figures, none too warmly clad, and 
the snow was of varying density, one beautiful 
ball, I remember, containing so much snow that 
‘it appeared, to one’s great enthusiasm, to almost 
cover up Little Red Ridinghood, and to smother 
up the colour of her cloak. My own children 
recollect having these, purchased by me years 
afterwards in Brighton, although not, I fancy, 
bought, as certainly my own were, on the Chain 
Pier, but they also have gone the way of children’s 
toys, and I have not seen one of those snowstorms, 
until, in my friend’s collection, I saw a wonderful 
example. I wish that I could obtain one now. 

There seems to be little in print about the Stour- 
bridge Glass Works, and not much more about 
the works at Bristol. About the Apsley-Pellatt 
Glass Works there are two books to be got, both 
of them rare and very seldom to be seen, one called 
“The Origin of Glass Manufacture,’’ another, 
more interesting, called ‘‘ The Curiosities of Glass- 
making.’”’? The whole subject is, however, well 
worth investigation, and to collectors who desire 
pretty objects for their collection, I can strongly 
recommend letter-weights and door-porters. 


CHAPTER XXXV 


- LUSTRE WARE 


CCASIONALLY, in old cottages and farm- 
() houses, one finds genuine examples of 
English lustre ware. Collectors must 
beware, however, because there is such a thing as 
“planting,” and in many instances dealers go 
round in country districts and “ plant ’’ examples 
of lustre ware—which may possibly be old, but 
are very likely to be modern—in suitable houses, 
trusting to the visit of confiding persons who take 
lunch or tea in the cottage and who, attracted by 
the lustrous objects on the mantelshelf, proceed to 
endeavour to purchase them, feeling quite sure 
that they are acquiring bargains at a very low 
price. | 
Really fine old English lustre is well worth 
having. There are three kinds of it—the silver, 
the copper, and the purple, as it is called. The 
oldest silver lustre is on a black or brown body. 
Later on it was made on a creamy body, but 
one gets the extreme brilliance of the silver 
lustre on nothing but the brown or brownish-black 
body. 
It was not actually silver that was used, but an 
254 


LUSTRE WARE | 235 


oxide of platinum, the first coat being composed 
of platinum dissolved in nitric acid and treated 
with a spirit obtained from tar, painted with a 
large brush over the earthenware and then fired. 
Then came the second coat, which gave it its rich 
appearance, added in the form of oxide of platinum, 
produced by sal ammoniac. The shapes were 
generally those which were also used in silver, 
and consequently, at a distance, it is not easy to 
detect the difference between a fine piece of silver 
lustre and a similar piece made in the precious 
metal itself ; in fact, some of the old tea-pots that 
were made in the silver lustre are almost identical 
in their appearance with the silver ones, and it is 
not until one handles them that one is aware of 
the divergence. 

In buying silver ware it is well to look out for 
pieces that are on a dark ground or body. They 
always have a far richer, fuller effect of colour 
than those that are on cream. 

The copper ware is much more frequently to 
be found, and belongs to a later period—about 
1824—and copper lustre is still being made at 
various Staffordshire potteries, but the finish is 
not as smooth, and the colour is not as clear and 
mirror-like because, as the small proportion of 
gold which the old potters used with the copper 
is generally omitted nowadays, the copper has 
lost lustre and depth. 

What the Leeds manufactory called the “ purple”’ 


256 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


lustre was of a rose shade with a metallic gloss 
upon it. Pieces entirely of this lustre are 
exceedingly rare. It is, however, very often 
to be found in bands round mugs, goblets 
or jugs. It was very difficult to obtain a 
perfect effect of colouring, and the firing 
sometimes injured it, so that very seldom 
indeed is it found applied altogether to a 
piece. | 

The shapes in the copper and the purple are not 
quite as fine, as a rule, as those in the silver ; the 
majority are jugs, but in the silver there are salt- 
cellars and tea-pots, shaving-cups and basins, and 
various things intended for tea ware, and occasion- 
ally vases, but these latter are particularly 
unusual. 

The copper was cheaper and it was applied to 
more ordinary objects of everyday use. The 
collectors who desire lustre ware very often unite 
with it some other pots which were made at the 
same factory, those that are called agate or. 
tortoise shell, or pieces made of an absolutely 
black basalt, which forms a very pleasing foil for 
the lustre. All of these wares were made in 
Staffordshire ; Wedgwood did some wonderful 
black basalt, and he also did some agate and 
some tortoise shell, first of all for knife-handles, 
and then for small vases or pots, agate being made 
of various coloured clays mingled together, the 
mottled or tortoise shell made in something the 


‘son[ a@uYLSN7] HSTIONY G10 ANd ada L 





k 








a 
LUSTRE WARE 289 


same way, but worked upon, while the clay or 
slip was wet, with a feather, a tool or a comb, 
producing an effect resembling that of marbled 
paper or tortoise shell. 

Very few of these pieces are marked. The 
collector must not search for marks or. names 
upon them, and as they came from various 
potteries, it is seldom safe to attribute them to 
any special potter. The pieces made at the Leeds 
pottery were, however, the best, and they generally 
can be identified by their lightness and by a 
particular charm of deep, full lustre or effect. 
The Leeds black basalt ware, which contained a 
considerable proportion of manganese, is not 
quite as smooth or as highly polished as Wedg- 
wood’s, and for that reason, many collectors 
rather prefer it, because Wedgwood’s lathe 
work took away a little from the simplicity 
and dignity of the piece and engine turning 
was out of place on pottery. Some of the 
prettiest pieces of the black are hot-water 
jugs, others are coffee-pots or butter-pots, 
vases, tea-canisters, sugar-basins, and some- 
times busts; all are worth attention and 
represent English potteries which have long ago 
disappeared and which produced some excellently 
good results. | 

Marked pieces are especially rare, and if 
anything can be found marked “ Leeds 


Pottery’’ or ‘Hartley, Green and Co,” or 
R 


258 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


‘“C.G.,” referring to’ Charles Green; or?” [pe 
which is the abbreviation of the words ‘“ Leeds 
Pottery,’ then the collector is _ particularly 
fortunate, as such pieces have a_ distinc- 
tive value and are in great demand amongst 
collectors. 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


OAK CHESTS 


that space is not too serious a considera- 
tion, old oak chests are delightful things 
to collect and are gradually becoming more and 
more difficult to obtain and, in consequence, 
more and more precious. 
_ The furniture collector must, however, be very 
careful in purchasing them, to avoid forgeries. 
There are lots of forged chests on the market, 
and only experience will teach him how to identify 
the originals from the fakes. He has a broad 
scope before him, because such chests were made 
in the thirteenth century, and their use continued 
up to the very end of the seventeenth. 

As a rule, the plainer an oak chest is the better 
and the older it is. The very earliest of the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were almost 
entirely plain, carving occurring upon them with 
great rarity and then only very simple work— 
rough circles or geometric stars, and nothing more. 

The oldest chests, moreover, were wrought out 
with an adze, and the timber was not sawn out. 
In many cases it will be noticed that it was 

259 


Pr tise a that one has an old house, and 


260 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


riven, that is to say, split with a rivening tool, 
and there are no great iron hinges such as appear 
at a later period. These very early chests are 
occasionally to be seen in churches, where they 
were the repository for vestments or documents, 
and sometimes when they have been ejected by 
ignorant persons from the church, they find their 
way into a village shop. In fact, one of the 
earliest I have ever seen, which certainly belonged 
to the fourteenth century, was in a blacksmith’s 
shop in Cornwall, and was used as a repository 
for tools and horse shoes. 

The old chests are a little clumsy in form ; the 
lids have no special moulding on them and are 
generally attached by pins to the boxes, but the 
chest itself is not framed up with any mortice 
and tenon, that belongs to a much later period ; 
it is just roughly put together with pegs or iron 
nails, the finer kind of good carpentering being 
reserved for quite other things and made use of 
by a class of workmen very different to the 
persons who made the oak chests. Sometimes 
the early chests have big squarish handles, 
because monastic chests were removed from 
monastery to monastery, and were often swung 
between horses when the journey was a long one. 
Very occasionally they have curved lids, but as 
a rule the lids are flat. 

There are a few of these chests to be seen that 
are of very great length, at least six feet long 


OAK CHESTS 261 


and sometimes over seven feet, and these, it has 
been suggested, were not for vestments or docu- 
ments, but for complete suits of armour, carefully 
stowed away, in proper position, in such long 
boxes. 

The collector can hardly hope to find one of 
these huge chests, as they are of very rare occur- 
rence. Very early chests do not have legs or 
feet or plinths, all these were of later introduction. 
When one comes to the fifteenth and sixteenth 
century boxes, one has to examine very carefully 
any plinth or foot, because the old chests, as a 
rule, stood right down on the ground, and feet, 
even to a fifteenth or sixteenth century chest, are 
generally additions and, in some cases, the 
carving has been added to, so that the chest can 
be raised a little above the floor. Seventeenth 
century chests often had feet or square supports 
which lifted them off the floor. Of those there 
are plenty to be got, but even they must be 
scrutinised with care, because they are frequently 
fabricated out of odd pieces of oak and are not 
genuine chests at all. 

It was from chests that the early idea of a 
cupboard arose. Chests were very handy for 
stowing away vestments or documents, but when 
it came to cups, especially tall ones, then cup- 
boards were desirable, and it will be remembered 
that we get the very word “ cupboard ”’ from the 
idea of a series of shelves, arranged staircase 


262 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


fashion, upon which cups could be exhibited, 
boards one above the other, and hence the word 
was applied to the tall cupboards, often known 
as “‘livery cupboards”’ or “bread and cheese 
cupboards ”’ which came in later than the chests. 

These cupboards, in original condition, are 
very rare. Lord Granby was one of the earlier 
collectors of them, and he got together several 
that were extremely important and untouched ; 
but they are frequently made up out of different 
pieces of old chests and, as a rule, these 
fakes have far too much carving upon them. 
The old ones had open-work, representing perhaps 
a star, or an ornamental letter or a lattice 
window, but otherwise the surface of the doors 
was plain. 

The modern faker is not content with the 
perforated ornament, but adjacent to it puts all 
kinds of chip carving, which utterly spoils the 
effect and, to an expert, gives away the secret at 
once. The old livery cupboards are sometimes to 
be found in stables or in outhouses, having been 
condemned because they had fallen to pieces, or 
had been regarded as ugly or useless. I saw one 
once in pieces in a village surgery, but there was 
little of the original cupboard left except one 
important door. 

These cupboards are not abwent entirely of 
oak. Sometimes the sides of the cupboard are 
of poplar, and poplar or other soft woods are also 


4 ir ee ssedess a 2 prongs 


 emennnmeennidiaiieammnniinn dai: ce 


s ¢ ¥y a 
Ve: 


4 aes & 





A GoopD OLD ENGLISH Oak CHEST. 


OAK CHESTS 263 


occasionally to be found in the chests, but it may 
be taken for granted that a chest which is com- 
posed partly of poplar and partly of oak is almost 
certainly an old one, because the forger is always 
anxious to say that the box he is trying to sell 
is all old oak. The best chests have only the 
carving on the front, the sides, as a rule, being 
plain ; the framing, even of seventeenth-century 
chests, is very rough and not marked by any 
particularly careful finish. Some of the boxes of 
the seventeenth century are inlaid in a kind 
of stiff architectural inlay, which has been called 
Nonsuch, because the design is said to resemble 
the appearance of the Palace of Nonsuch, and 
these chests generally belong to a period of about 
1680. 

I believe that the popular family name of 
Arkwright was originally derived from the makers 
of the old oak chests, which in ancient inventories 
are alluded to as “‘arks,’ and that the early 
“ arkwrights ’’ were the people who were respons- 
ible for making up these boxes for church purposes. 
Elaborately carved chests are, as a rule, to be 
avoided. They are quite easy to produce; the 
price asked for them, as a rule, is out of all pro- 
portion to their merit, and they are frequently 
compounded of pieces of oak from oak buffets or 
cupboards ; and the reverse is also the case with 
the oak buffet, for its cupboard underneath is 
very frequently made up of the fragments of a 


. 


204 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


certain number of chests.. To the real collector, 
plain chests are the attraction and, if they are 
unrestored, broken or damaged, they are more 
likely to be genuine and worth securing. There 
are but a few of them to be found, and they are 
well worth searching for. 


~ 


CHAPTER XXXVII 
SEALS AND SEALING-WAX 


T a friend’s house a while ago I saw an 
interesting collection of old seals. Not 


the impressions in wax, but the actual 
seals such as men used to wear in the eighteenth 
century in bunches on a fob chain, and very 
pretty many of them were. The bulk, however, 
were in what the jewellers call “red” gold and 
not yellow gold, showing that they belong to a 
period of late Georgian art rather than to an 
early time, such as that of Queen Anne, when 
the gold used was much yellower in tone than it 
was in later days. 

The majority of the stones used in them were 
of carnelian—a mineral that people so often 
miscall cornelian, forgetting that it derives its 
name from its resemblance to flesh and hence it 
should be spelled with an “a” rather than 
an ‘‘ o ’’—but some were engraved on topaz, others 
on a white carnelian, and some on white quartz. 

Old seals are of various sizes, some quite small, 
others very large and massive. Generally they 
have but one sealing side, but sometimes the stone 
Swings over and is engraved on both sides. 

265 


266 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Occasionally one finds beautiful armorial bearings — 
engraved upon them, but, as a rule, the emblems 
are classical or French, and sometimes amusing 
and clever in their wit. 

In a collection I recently looked at, there were 
two or three fitted with whistles above the seal 
such as I had never seen before. Another collec- 
tion had three or four of those véry rare seals made 
of Chelsea porcelain—charming little figures, very 
delicate and dainty, surely made in order to show 
how prettily these toys could be produced rather 
than for actual use. 

Then, again, another collector had been making 
a speciality of a different kind of seal—the long- 
handled ones, where the handle is three inches or 
so in length, and the seal was intended to lie on 
the writing table for use when necessary. One 
or two of these were in fine lumps of bloodstone ; 
a very handsome one was in smoked quartz ; 
one or two of the handles were jade, others clear, 
transparent rock-crystal ; and many, very beauti- is 
fully worked, were in ivory. Sometimes pieces of 
Oriental carved ivory were used, but at other times 
the ivory was evidently worked in this country, 
from the plainness and simplicity of its detail. 

In the same collection I found Wedgwood 
handles for seals; lilac or blue jasper, with 
slightly relieved decoration in white; a strange 
one that was made, I imagine, at Bristol or 
Nailsea, of green glass, with tiny bubbles in it ; 


SEALS AND SEALING-WAX 267 


a cleverly wrought one in iron, representing a 
squirrel and a nut enclosed in a piece of foliage ; 
some jet ones, which I imagine came from Whitby ; 
and several bearing the marks of the Dresden 
porcelain, with one special rarity that was quite 
clearly made at Sévres. All of these were, of 
course, the table seals and not intended to be 
worn, but amongst them was a very fine one 
indeed of Egyptian onyx. In some of them the 
engraving was actually of the same material as 
the handle, the whole being one solid piece; in 
others the engraving was a separate piece of stone 
enclosed in a frame of gold work, attached to the 
handle. : 

Then there are occasionally to be met with 
those odd seals that open at the top and have a 
series of little steel stamps, which can be used as 
desired, fitted into the framework at the other 
end. These are generally very fanciful in their 
devices and sometimes amusing. I imagine that 
there was no serious importance in them—they 
were toys rather than tools. It did strike me, 
however, as a rather curious thing, that the. 
collector of these long-handled seals, of which | 
he had quite an important series, did not himself 
know how to make a proper impression with them, 
but adopted the usual habit of lighting a match 
and burning a piece. of sealing-wax, very much 
to waste, with a series of black spots on the 
hot wax and various drops of wax scattered in 


268 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


different directions, and then hurriedly put the 
seal on it, with the result of a very poor 
impression. 

Years ago the art of sealing used to be taught 
as one of the accomplishments that it was desirable 
that a person, especially a lady, should understand 
and appreciate; and one notes amongst the 
Sheffield-plated things various cases for these 
long, twisted tapers which were used for the 
purpose—and in their bright green colour, inside 
the silver basket-shaped mount, looked very 
pretty ; and also small lamps, which were used 
for the same sort of purpose. As a matter of 
fact there is nothing so good for making a seal 
as a small spirit lamp; but to push the piece of 
wax into the flame of the candle, taper or lamp, 
and as soon as a bit of it is melted dab it on 
to the paper, and then to melt another and 
similar piece, to try to gather the shapeless mass 
together and then, with great haste, dab on the 
seal, is pretty sure to produce an impression 
that is no credit to the sealer, instead of one 
that might be quite worth looking at and 
satisfactory. 

A careful sealer, on the contrary, never thrusts 
his wax into the flame but holds it just above the 
point, and moves it round and round in his 
fingers until he has a sufficient amount of the 
wax soft and melted. He can increase the 
velocity of the evolutions until there is plenty of 


SEALS AND SEALING-WAX 269 


it ready to put on to the envelope, taking care 
that the drops—or as they are vulgarly called, 
“ kisses ’’—do not fall about in all directions. 
‘Then, when the wax is brought to its proper 
haven and turned round with its lower edge 
away from the sealer, it is gradually brought 
upright in the hand, the molten part rubbed 
round slightly so as to level it on all sides, the 
circle being gradually decreased until one ends 
in the middle of it, and then, if it is not quite free 
from bubbles or lumps, it may be held quite 
lightly half an inch above the flame of the taper 
or lamp until the bubbles disappear. 

There is no tremendous hurry in putting on the 
seal: if you put it on when the wax is very liquid 
you get a deep frame and a very poor picture. 
You should hold the seal just for a moment over 
the point of the taper, try it on the back of your 
hand to see if it is really warm, place it again over 
the flame, and then put it down very lightly, press 
it steadily, and then as steadily remove, and the 
result should be much more satisfactory than the 
usual seal. Some persons prefer just slightly to 
breathe on the surface of the seal, others touch it 
on their hair or face: both results having 
exactly the same effect, producing the thinnest 
possible atmosphere or dampness between the 
wax and the seal, so that the wax does not become 
attached to the body of the seal. 

The most beautiful seals, of course, are those 


270 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


where the centre part of the seal is coloured with 
Chinese vermilion of the very finest possible quality. 
As a rule the seal engraver produced his perfect 
impressions on a piece of stout cardboard, which 
he can actually hold over the flame of the lamp 
and then he has an excellent opportunity for a 
good result; but one cannot do that with an 
envelope, and therefore a different course has to 
be adopted—a polishing brush is needed and a 
- camel’s hair one as well, and the tiniest possible 
morsel of fine pomatum, about the size of a pin’s 
head, is just rubbed over the surface of the 
polishing brush. The seal is warmed, the polish- 
ing brush passed across it two or three times, the 
camel’s hair brush dipped in the vermilion, which 
is very lightly and very equally applied to the 
face of the seal so as to leave the thinnest possible 
mask of powder over every part of it. The loose 
vermilion is then blown off with the breath so 
that it does not lodge in the hollows, the wax is 
melted, and the seal very carefully applied as in 
the ordinary way; but the impression that 
should result is infinitely finer, because the border 
retains the natural brilliancy of the wax and the 
centre part, where the seal has touched, is of a 
deep, red vermilion. 

There appear to be so many collectors of seals 
nowadays that it seems a pity that the art of 
sealing a letter should have dropped out, and 
perchance these few explanations may be deemed 


ae 


SEALS AND SEALING-WAX 27% 


of some service. Some persons always seal their 
correspondence. One friend of mine invariably 
does so, determined that no chance should be 
given to any inquisitive person for the opening of 
his letters. There are several persons who in- 
variably wear seals as fobs, especially with 
evening dress; and on most library- tables, 
especially in good houses, there can be found 
handled seals with initials, or the name of the 
house, or the armorial achievements. That being 
so, it is surely a pity that proper care should 
not be taken in using these beautiful seals, because 
the joy of seeing a well-executed seal on an 
envelope is a considerable one, and there is no 
reason, unless one is very busily engaged, for the 
seal to be a carelessly executed impression. 
Naturally, when people seal up parcels, it does 
not much matter how the seal is produced, 
provided the impression is fairly clear ; but, when 
the envelope is going to a person of some im- 
portance and the seal is a good one, why should 
not the impression be equally good? There are 
still a few persons—very few, I suppose—who 
make use of quarto notepaper, fold it, wafer it, 
and seal it in the way that I myself was taught 
to send a letter from very earliest days, envelopes 
being regarded as rather unnecessary and com- 
mercial. Persons who do fold their paper in this 
fashion—amongst whom, it may be mentioned, 
was the late Lord Salisbury—keep up the art 


272 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


of sealing, and the result is a very pleasant 
one. 

Seals are interesting things to collect; there 
are many of them to be got in jewellers’ shops 
and, sometimes, in pawnbrokers’. They are quite 
pretty to have and to use, and if properly used can 
be a source of much satisfaction. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 


BEAUTIFUL FRUIT-BASKETS 


in the productions of the old English 

potteries, and choice examples are fetch- 
ing higher prices than they have ever done before. 
Collectors are beginning to turn a fresh attention 
to the beautiful openwork, creamy ware made in 
Leeds in the latter part of the eighteenth century, 
under the auspices, first of all, of Mr. Green, then, 
later on, of a firm composed of his own people 
and, finally, of a Mr. Hartley in conjunction with 
them, the pottery continuing in existence down 
to 1820. Nothing more delightful was ever 
turned out in any English pottery. The fruit- 
baskets and dishes, especially those which had 
beautiful openwork cutting, were remarkable for 
their grace and shape, and their charm of quiet, 
creamy colour. 

Sometimes they have been confused with very 
similar baskets and dishes made by Wedgwood, 
and it is not easy, from a description, to dis- 
tinguish between the two; but Leeds ware was 
glazed with a glaze which has a distinct green 
tinge about it, and when it is thick or in small 

S 273 


: FRESH interest has recently been taken 


274 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


lumps about the foot of the piece, or at its base, 
the greenish tinge can be quickly distinguished. 
Moreover, it is exceedingly light in weight, and a 
connoisseur will detect it almost by such means 
alone. It was not only made in the soft, creamy 
earthenware that had no decoration upon it, but 
it was made with a transfer decoration, both in 
black and in colour. 

There are also pieces decorated by hand with 
charming borders, sometimes inscribed—having, 
perchance, reference to Nelson or to Wilkes, or to 
the actual family for which the pieces were made 
—and sometimes with dates, ranging from about 
1792 down to about 1812. 

Amongst the most beautiful pieces were the 
baskets made to receive roasted chestnuts, which 
in the eighteenth century were much more 
frequently served at table than they are in the © 
present day. Amongst the very rarest are the 
water cisterns. These are sometimes the subject 
of inquiry. Is it possible, it is asked, that these 
can be actually intended for water? Are they, 
by any chance, tea-urns, or for chocolate? The 
explanation is quite an easy one, however, because, 
in the days when the factory was at work, the 
water of Leeds was by no means satisfactory and 
the wealthier of the inhabitants used to import 
water specially for tea from Helbeck, and these 
cisterns, in the old catalogues of the Leeds ware, 
are specifically called ‘‘ Helbeck water cisterns. 


BEAUTIFUL FRUIT-BASKETS 275 


Leeds ware was particularly concerned with 
table decoration, both for dinner and for tea. 
There are charming teapots, sometimes with 
twisted ribbon handles ; kettles of a similar kind, 
and the stands upon which they were placed so 
arranged as to receive a nightlight or a lamp; 
and there were cups and saucers and the other 
adjuncts for the tea-table, or Tea-board service, 
as the Leeds catalogue termed them. 

Then, for the more important meal, Leeds ware 
potteries especially catered, and some of the most 
notajake pieces were the centre pieces for sweet- 
meats or fruit; and those with hanging baskets 
attached to the branches are particularly desirable 
acquisitions, when perfect fetching very large 
sums. They generally have terminal figures, but 
sometimes there are three figures on the top, known 
as the ‘‘ Three Jolly Boys of Leeds.” 

Then there are beautiful candlesticks, open- 
work baskets, with or without covers, for holding 
the fruit, melon-holders, pots with covers and 
stands for sugar, sometimes made in the shape 
of a melon, and at other times circular or oval, 
while, if they happen to possess their original 
ladles, they are of exceptional value. 

The Tea-board services sometimes included a 
long, shallow, oval dish with its cover, which was 
intended for Yorkshire scones or girdle cakes, and 
which is quite a delightful piece; and light was 
afforded on the meal not only by the candlesticks, 


270 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


but by some very sumptuous vases which the 
pottery turned out, in which the top ornament 
could be reversed, revealing a candlestick in which 
a small candle could be placed. Then there are 
drug jars to be obtained, on which, in pleasing 
lettering, the name of the drug is represented ; 
there are loving-cups with two handles, some of 
which commemorate the notable people of Leeds 
or of the nation ; and there are those very pretty 
tulip or crocus vases, which are like five fingers 
coming out of a centre, and in which it was a 
favourite thing in the eighteenth century to plant — 
small bulbs, different in colour, and so have a 
charming group of flowers for the table. 

There are small jugs to be obtained, taller ones 
for hot milk, coffee and chocolate pots, cruet 
frames of many sorts with their cruets, stands for 
soy—somewhat different to those used for cruets— 
urns which must have been intended for choco- 
late, and different kinds of vases—circular ones 
for holding a large quantity of flowers, and 
very small ones that would hold a single bloom. 
Besides all these, there are numerous shapes of 
plates, almost all with beautiful perforated bor- 
ders and sometimes with a fan-shaped decoration 
in the centre; and there are smaller ones, such 
as shells and shell-shaped dishes, for holding sweet- 
meats ; and single cruets, such as single peppers 
or mustards that were never intended to stand in 
any cruet at all, but by themselves on the table. 


BEAUTIFUL FRUIT-BASKETS 277 


Fortunately we know a great deal about the 
history of the Leeds pottery. There was a rare 
book issued concerning it in 1892, and there are 
some of the old catalogues still remaining with 
drawings, especially one which came out in 1794, 
and which alludes to the compotieres and salad 
dishes, or ragout dishes, and the terrines (as the 
word is spelled), dishes and soup plates, butter 
tubs, candlesticks, chestnut baskets, and even to 
such things as inkstands and _ shaving-basins, 
eye-cups, radish-dishes, wafer-boxes and sand- 
boxes, water cups and ice-bowls, and two asl 
specially prepared for pot-pourri. 

All these things are still to be obtained occa- 
sionally, and in a dark oak cupboard or against 
velvet few things are more delightful than a 
collection of creamy Leeds ware. In using the 
pieces on the table it must not be forgotten that 
they were not intended to stand on the white 
linen tablecloth now in use. That spoils their 
effect. They were made to stand on the polished 
surface of oak or mahogany tables, or even more 
often on those bright red and blue tablecloths 
that are occasionally to be seen in the form of 
napkins or small cloths, and which had bright 
chequer patterns, more like a tartan, upon them. 
On these the Leeds ware sets forth its triumphant 
charm of colour. 


CHAPTER XXXIX 


OLD CLOCKS 


EW things in the way of domestic furniture 
HK have increased so much in price in recent 
years as clocks. I do not think that they 
have reached their top price yet. There are many 
collectors ; there are very few fine clocks. Many 
of the clocks on the market have been altered, 
changed, interfered with. It is more and more 
important that collectors should know how to 
determine a genuine old clock and something of 
its value. 

The long case clocks came in in about 1665. 
They were preceded by the hanging wall clocks, 
which were in demand between 1600 and 1670, 
and which were, as a rule, thirty-hour clocks and 
with but one hand. They were pull-up clocks ; 
and those that have been altered with interior 
mechanism, doing away with the weights and the 
long pendulum, are quite unimportant and not 
worth having at any price. 

When one comes to deal with the long case 
clock there are, first of all, the square-dialed 
ones, and, much later on, those with the arched 


dial; but very early square-dialed ones had the 
278 


OLD CLOCKS 279 


space where the spans generally occur quite plain. 
Then, a little later on, the corners of the square 
dial were engraved and, later still, they were 
decorated with four span ornaments. These were, 
as a rule, carefully chased and water-gilt; in 
modern or altered clocks they are of the roughest 
possible manufacture, frequently stamped out, 
and the engraving coarse and unsatisfactory. 

As regards the hour circles, the very earliest 
of all did not have the minutes marked on the 
inside rim. That rim inside the figures was just 
two narrow lines. It was not until about 1670 
or 1675 that one finds it graduated off for minutes. 
It was at about the same time that the inner 
circle for the second hand began to be introduced, 
and in the earliest clocks that seconds circle is set 
rather away from the hour circle—for example, 
in clocks by Tompion and Knibb, and in the 
earlier clocks by Quare, the seconds circle does 
not touch the large hour circle; but, in about 
1680, a little change took place, and the seconds 
circle was pushed a little closer up to the hour 
circle and touches it just below the figure XII. 

Then, in the early clocks, the name of the 
maker is at the bottom of the hour circle, and not 
in the middle of the circle. I believe Quare was 
the first to put his name in the middle of the 
hour circle, and he did it on a little inserted oval 
space. In the earlier ones, especially in those by 
Tompion, the name appears either in English or 


280 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


in Latin (generally Latin) below the figure VI, 
in the hour circle; and in many of the best 
clocks by this maker there is a charming en- 
graved border all round the square dial, with a 
space at the bottom left plain, on which the 
name of the maker is engraved. 

Then, again, the best of the early clocks have 
little shutters covering over the winding holes. 
By the way, tall case clocks without winding 
holes are not satisfactory. There are some to be 
found that were wound up by pulling up the 
weights by means of chains, as one did in the old 
lantern clocks, but if this occurs in a long case 
clock it makes it quite valueless to a collector—it 
is a degenerate clock. 

As a rule, the numerals on the circle are, in 
the old clocks, very much as they are in the 
modern ones, having four strokes for the figure 4, 
but if, in lieu of these four strokes, one finds IV, 
then one knows that the clock has a different 
system of striking, striking two bells on the 
Roman numeral system, a plan introduced first 
of all by Joseph Knibb, in order to save the 
wear of the mechanism of the clock involved in 
so many strokes on the bell. In the oldest clocks 
the winding holes are very largely apart, nearer 
to the hour circle than they are in the modern 
ones, and if one finds the two winding holes 
pretty close to one another, and near to the 
centre of the dial; the clock is not a good one. 


OLD CLOCKS 281 


Quare was, I think, the first to introduce fine 
silvered circles, and in all the early clocks it is 
important to notice that the hands are of the 
right length. I cannot explain in an article of 
this kind the difference between the right hands 
and the wrong ones. One recognises the right 
hand by experience, and by the various sketches 
given in books on clocks, but the minute hand 
should just touch the two engraved lines that are 
round the figures, and the hour hand should just 
touch the very base of the Roman figures. The 
seconds circle is very often not inside the dial, but 
on the extreme edge. This is particularly the 
case with the clocks by Quare, where he made a 
broad, graduated seconds circle, outside the hour 
circle, and put Arabic figures, 10, 15, 20 and so 
on, to distinguish the different divisions. In the 
earliest clocks the bells are not true circles, having 
a certain amount of squarish shape about them, 
Knibb’s especially. 

Then, the genuine old cases have a system of 
raising the hood on a clocked spring, so that the 
clock can be properly attended to and wound in 
satisfactory fashion. This raising of the hood is 
an almost certain mark of a genuine fine clock. 

The existence of the separate circle for the 
Arabic numerals, introduced first of all by Quare, 
became general in the eighteenth century, and 
almost all the best clocks of that period (take, 
for example, those by Davis, Bradley, Gretton, 


282 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Gould and such makers) have all, more or less, 
elaborate minutes circles, in some cases marking 
each minute separately, in others dividing them 
off into tens. | | 

The arched dial came in about 1720-25. Clocks 
are not often seen with arched dials before that 
date. All the best long case clocks were made 
before 1765. Nothing that is much later than 
that is of any particular importance. The finest 
clock cases were not inlaid ones. The very best 
clocks—those by Tompion, Graham, Quare—are 
invariably in plain cases; in some cases the 
clocks are rigidly plain, because the great makers 
preferred to devote their labour to fine mechanism. 
It has been said that the early clock-makers never 
gave anything else but timekeeping mechanism, 
but this is not entirely the case, because I have 
heard of a clock by East with several bells, and 
a clock by Tompion that plays tunes, but these 
are most exceptional, and must have been been 
made to special orders, the early makers being, 
as a rule, determined to devote their attention 
to perfect timekeeping mechanism. 

The earliest Tompion clock was made about 
1709, and that has an arched dial, but the arched 
dial was the square form with the arch added, © 
and not the arched dial made complete; the join- 
ing of the two parts of the dial can clearly be 
seen, the arch was only an ornament, it has no 
other function. In the arched dial between 1725 


OLD CLOCKS 283 


and 1735, the hour ring is divided into quarters 
between each numeral on the inside edge. After 
1735, this arrangement disappears. 

Some of the tall cases were in lacquer—green, 
brown and, very, very rarely, red. I have never 
heard of one in blue lacquer or in cream lacquer, 
and I am very much disposed to think that 
neither of those two forms of lacquer were 
eighteenth-century work at all, but have been 
invented for the benefit of collectors later on. 

In addition to grandfather clocks, there are 
what are known as grandmother ones, much 
smaller, exceptionally small in size, and these 
are very much rarer than the tall case ones. 
Some of the grandest of the clock cases are 
of fine mahogany. 

When we come to deal with bracket clocks, we 
start with a period of the time of Charles ITI, and 
some of the earliest good bracket clocks were the 
work of Edward East, who was the King’s clock- 
maker, and who was also responsible for some 
exceedingly good watches. The earliest bracket 
clocks were architectural in their shape, and 
generally either veneered with ebony or made of 
solid pear-tree wood, stained black, and the 
movements were generally of very fine work, with 
good hands, narrow hour circles, with minute 
divisions on the extreme outer edge, beautiful 
chased corner-pieces and dials water-gilt. 

The lantern clocks were, of course, the very 


284 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


earliest of all, and there are examples—the work 
of Edward East, Payne and other makers—going 
back to circa 1600. These lantern clocks had to 
stand on a bracket, owing to the space required 
for the long pendulum and the fall of the weights, 
and it was because of the space that these bird- 
cage clocks occupied that the arrangement was 
introduced for a true bracket clock, where no 
long pendulum or weights were required. 

Collectors are urged to be very cautious in 
buying clocks, and to thoroughly examine any 
clock offered to them, and, if possible, take 
advice. A fine clock is worth a great deal of 
money and is, moreover, an excellent investment, 
because it will go up in value. A poor clock is 
not worth having at any price, it will not be a 
good timekeeper and it will never sell again for 
a substantial price. Two or three really fine 
clocks are a much more Satisfactory possession 
than any number of ordinary ones. It is not 
every house that can take the long case clocks, 
and, consequently, the bracket clocks are more 
popular. Sometimes these have two bells—a 
“ ting-tang,’’ as it is called, for the quarters, and 
the hours on a separate bell, sometimes five, 
seven or eleven bells, operated by a spiked drum, 
in the fashion of a musical-box, but a great many 
of the bracket clocks on the market are absolutely 
rubbish, simply made to sell, and of no importance 
at all to the collector. 


CHAPTER XL 


SHEFFIELD PLATE 


| MONGST objects of domestic utility, few 

A have so rapidly increased in value within 

the last few years than those made in 
Sheffield in a period which extended down to 
1790, and known as Sheffield plate. 

There was, in the eighteenth century, a de- 
mand for objects of beauty for the table less 
costly than solid silver and better in appearance 
than pewter, and at the very moment when this 
demand existed, the discovery was made by 
Bolsover in 1742 which led to the manufacture 
of Sheffield plate. By it, he was able to pro- 
duce an imitation silver, beating out a thin layer 
of the precious metal, placing it on a copper 
foundation and fusing the two metals together by 
the action of heat. This was the starting-point 
for what presently became a great and prosperous 
trade. | 

In referring, however, to Sheffield plate I want 
to confine my attention to what is known as the 
‘““ copper mount ”’ period, which extended to about 
1790, and have nothing to say about the later 


work, which was known as the “ silver mount ”’ 
285 


286 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


period. Fine Sheffield plate of this first period is 
distinguished by extreme beauty of design and, 
provided it has not been tampered with, it has a 
full resemblance to silver. , 

It is entirely different to what is known as 
“ electro-plate,”’ but unfortunately the two things 
are often combined. A piece of Sheffield plate 
which has sustained a great deal of wear, so much 
so that the copper foundation shows through, is 
often electro-plated with lamentable effect, be- 
cause the importance of the piece is ruined, and 
the electro-plating is never satisfactory, for the 
marks where the original silver has worn away 
are always apparent in time. 

There are certain ways by which real old 
Sheffield plate can be known, and the principal 
test for it, as Veitch has pointed out in the chief 
work on the subject, is the “ seam test,” for there 
are always seams on all good pieces of Sheffield 
plate-marking where the joining took place. 
The seams are not conspicuous, and have to be 
sought for, but if the piece has been electro-plated 
all these seams are covered up. 

Then, again, the depth of the silver applied to 
the copper is a test, and if a piece of doubtful 
Sheffield plate is scraped very gently on the foot 
or in some place where the damage does not 
matter, if the first scraping or two reveals the 
metal the piece is almost certainly a forgery. 
The real expert claims to be able to detect Sheffield 


SHEFFIELD PLATE 287 


plate by its colour, and such is certainly the case, 
for when one is accustomed to look at Sheffield 
plate, whether it is genuine or not can be detected 
almost in a moment. 

The Sheffield plate manufacturers were fortu- 
nate in the artists who designed their work, and 
I am inclined to think that some of the most 
beautiful things ever made in England were the 
jugs, baskets, candlesticks and cruet frames that 
were produced by these manufacturers. 

Amongst the rarest pieces of all are those which 
were produced by wire work, when thin sheets of 
silver were attached to drawn copper wire, and 
from this wire salt-cellars and cake-baskets, sugar- 
baskets, muffineers and mustard-pots were made, 
and, above all, the wonderful epergnes which are 
occasionally still to be found, with their smaller 
baskets hanging from them. The wire was some- 
times made circular, sometimes flat, occasionally 
three-sided, or even square, and from it were 
prepared the cruet-frames, baskets and mustard- 
pots about which collectors are now so enthusi- 
astic. From 1775-85 was the very best period 
for Sheffield plate, and particularly noticeable at 
that period are baskets that were intended to 
have glass linings, generally blue or red, and 
were to contain sugar. Sometimes they are on 
an oval foot, sometimes on three upright pieces. 
They are to be found urn-shaped and both oval 
and circular. Frequently they are perforated so 


288 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


as to show the glass through, and they are almost 
invariably of delightful classic shape. 

_ Then, again, there are the hot-water jugs, for 
which there were several very good designs, 
resembling classic vases and moulded on the same 
sort of lines as those used for Adam decoration, 
with the pendent swags of drapery upon them 
which add so much to the charms of that particular 
sort of design. 

Fortunately, a few of the oritinals makers’ 
catalogues have survived, notably a very fine 
one issued by Nathaniel Smith & Co., in which 
there are all kinds of illustrations showing the 
various objects which this. firm was producing. 
There are four delightful sugar-basins or cream- 
bowls, some charming cruet-frames, and frames 
for soy bottles, a whole series of different salt- 
cellars, some fine inkstands, those interesting 
bottle-stands known as _ wine-slides, decanter- 
stands or coasters, some of which were mounted 
on wheels, several tea-pots and tea-caddies ; and 
of all these we know not only the design, but 
the price at which they were made, and that 
they were actually produced, so that a collector, 
having this catalogue before him, may hope, 
some day or other, to be able to obtain some a 
the beautiful objects it represents. 

Candelabra were the subjects of very special 
care on the part of the Sheffield plate makers. 
It was the period, it will be remembered, for 


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SHEFFIELD PLATE 289 


candles, and at important tables there were two 
or three candelabra, each holding two candles 
and, in some cases, on the removal of the central 
ornament, capable of holding three. Great pains 
were bestowed upon the design and manufacture 
of these candlesticks, and they are frequently 
objects of extreme beauty, graceful and delightful 
in design. 

We do not exactly know what the escallop shells 
were made for, but there were a great many of 
them turned out by the manufacturers, so that — 
they must have been very popular in their time, 
and we have no particular use nowadays for the 
taper stands—oval, openwork cases of wirework 
which contained the wound-up green taper. 

These must have been very popular in their 
day, for they are often referred to, but they are 
not very easy to obtain nowadays, and collectors 
have to be particularly careful in purchasing them 
as so many modern reproductions have been made. 

The candlesticks were very seldom loaded with 
lead, but the modern reproductions almost always 
are so loaded. The original ones were loaded 
with pitch, finished at the base with a thin piece 
of wood, which was covered with green baize. 

The common remark that parts of Sheffield plate 
work are in silver does not apply to the best kind 
of Sheffield plate. It does apply to the second 
period, when many handles and feet and knops and 


sockets were made of silver; but the finest and 
T 


290 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


best pieces of Sheffield plate belonging to the. 
earlier period were entirely composed of silver 
beaten on to copper, and have no lumps of solid 
silver upon them. Some of the most beautiful 
pieces (and incidentally some of the rarest) are 
what are known as “ potato rings,”’ because they 
were used on the table to hold the wooden bowl 
in which potatoes cooked in their skins were 
served up in Ireland. The makers’ name for 
them was “dish stands,’’ and the genuine ones 
were always different in size top and bottom, so 
that they could be used for holding dishes of 
varying sizes, according to the positions that they 
assumed on the table. Their use for the wooden 
potato bowl was only one of their uses, and not 
perhaps the chief one, although it has given them 
their name ; but in the days when polished tables 
were almost invariably in use, it was important 
that the hot dishes should be kept away from the 
table, and hence these table-rings were introduced, 
upon which the dishes could be set. 

There are very attractive two-handled cups ; 
there are tea-caddies, both upright and square 
and octagon ; there are tankards and dish-crosses, 
on which dishes were supported, very much in 
the same way as the potato rings supported the 
dishes, only sometimes these crosses are provided 
with a lamp in the centre that the dishes might be 
kept hot. Then there are the salvers and wine- 
coolers, what are known as argyles, in which there 


SHEFFIELD PLATE 291 


is a receptacle for hot water in order that the 
gravy may not be cooled down by the use of the 
cold ladle ; sauce tureens, pepperpots, stands for 
spoons, and, perhaps as beautiful as anything, 
cream jugs with tall wire handles. These jugs 
are very often exquisitely graceful in design, and 
particularly precious. 

Some people say that they would prefer, when 
they are purchasing objects of this kind, to pay 
more money and have solid silver. Such an idea 
is, no doubt, an agreeable one, but many of the 
beautiful designs in Sheffield plate are not to be 
obtained in silver at all, although no doubt they 
could, given time and opportunity, be copied; 
but the finest pieces of Sheffield plate, in good 
condition, are not only as beautiful as silver, but 
represent an important English industry of the 
eighteenth century, examples of which are becom- 
ing increasingly rare, and are more pleasant for 
use on the table than silver by reason of their 
greater lightness, their extreme daintiness in 
design, and for the fact that, moreover, they are 
Sheffield plate, and are therefore not interesting | 
to the ordinary thief or burglar. He is not going 
to waste his time over pieces of Sheffield plate, 
however important they may be. He prefers 
solid metal that can be quickly melted up for his 
Own purposes. 

Perhaps the best collections of Sheffield plate 
in existence were those belonging to Mr. Veitch, 


292 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


who has written so much about it, to Viscountess 
Wolseley, and to Mrs. Johnson Brown. A great 
many of the best pieces are marked, and by the 
marks it is possible to find out in many instances 
who were the manufacturers, and in that way to 
identify the actual date. 

The number of the collectors of Sheffield plate 
is rapidly increasing, and, as might be expected, 
this increase in collectors has led to a similar 
increase in faking, so that far greater care must 
be taken in purchasing examples of Sheffield 
plate than was at all necessary a few years ago. 


CHAPTER XLI 


OLD FURNITURE 


N view of a recent action in the Law Courts, 
it may be well to give some hints to my 
readers concerning the purchase of old 

English furniture. It is necessary first of all to 
explain that nothing can supersede experience 
and that a fairly intimate knowledge of the 
furniture of the period is requisite before a col- 
lector can claim to be an expert. He will not, 
for instance, look for an Elizabethan hat and 
umbrella stand, or an early Stuart sideboard 
with a cellaret, nor will he expect to find walnut 
lamp stands richly carved in the manner of bed- 
posts, and if he sees a mahogany or walnut bureau 
with a great deal of carving upon its flap, he will 
immediately recognise that it has no interest to 
him. 

First impressions count for a great deal in 
forming an opinion about furniture, because the 
most difficult thing that a forger has to copy is 
the effect of the polish—what the expert calls 
the “patina.” Pieces of old furniture were 
treated with beeswax and turpentine, and polished 
with what our grandparents called “ elbow- 

293 


294 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


grease,’ producing an entirely different effect 
from a modern French polishing. In French 
polishing, the grain has to be filled up, and a 
mirror-like effect of polish obtained on the furni- 
ture in very even fashion, whereas the old polish 
has a depth and solidity, and an inequality that 
at present defies reproduction. In consequence, 
the first idea of the expert is, “‘ Does the thing 
look right ?”’ “Is it such as the original cabinet- 
maker would have madeit ?’’ It may be desirable 
to remove one of the handles from, say, a chest 
of drawers, in order to see whether the wood is 
of a different colour underneath the handle to 
what it is on either side, and if, on the removal, 
it is found to be even in colour all over the front 
of the drawer, it may generally be taken for 
granted that the piece is not an old piece, and 
that the polish has been put on lately, because, 
in the really old pieces, the handle would have 
covered up the wood, and the wood underneath 
it would have been of quite a different colour to 
what it is near by. 

Taking the same chest of drawers as an example, 
it will be well to look to the lining of the drawers. 
If they are of pine, the piece is certainly faked, 
because pine was never used for drawer linings of 
good walnut or of early mahogany furniture until 
about 1780, and then only occasionally. Pine 
becomes reddish in time, and a little cut with a 
penknife would quickly determine whether the 


OLD FURNITURE 295 


linings of the drawers have been stained to a 
particular colour, and what they were originally 
made of. The way in which the drawer-frames 
are joined together is important, the old drawer 
frames of oak had oak pegs in their tenons, and 
the system of dovetailing, impossible to explain 
in the limits of a chapter of this sort, was different 
to that adopted in the present day. 

_ The screws used in a piece of furniture have to 
be examined, and by the aid of a strong glass, a 
hand-made screw can quickly be detected from 
a machine-made one. The collector must not 
jump to the conclusion that all gimlet-pointed 
screws are machine-made, and date from the 
establishment of the firm of Nettlefold and 
Chamberlain, because, prior to the history of that 
firm, there were gimlet-pointed screws, but as 
they were made by hand there are variations in 
them—slight eccentricities in thread, and an 
irregularity in their edges. 

Then the expert needs to have some knowledge 
of the grain of wood, because apple, pear and 
lime.are all used in modern fakes (one is almost 
compelled to use the verb as a noun, although, 
strictly speaking, it should be an adjective) in 
lieu of mahogany, and they are stained to the 
colour of mahogany. This can sometimes be 
detected merely by the veining of the wood, but 
very often a little bit has to be cut away, to 
show what is underneath. 


290 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Pieces of furniture that are decorated with 
floral paintings are generally of satin wood, and 
the old satin wood was a straight-grained wood 
of quite pale lemon colour, not, as a rule, a rich 
florid wood of a deep golden colour; and the 
painting upon it should be very closely examined 
with the pocket glass, because old painting is 
never even in surface: in places it sinks in, where 
the wood is a little soft, whereas new painting has 
exactly the same quantity of relief all over the 
panel, and the difference between a wreath of 
flowers painted on a satin wood panel a few months 
ago and that painted on an old piece of furniture 
can often be detected by the tips of the fingers 
without any further examination. In mahogany 
furniture there are divergences of weight; the 
modern mahogany is much lighter to lift than 
furniture made with old wood. 

The old West Indian mahogany was a very 
heavy, close-grained wood, the modern Honduras 
is quite different. Where there is much orna- 
mentation, it should be examined with great care, 
whether it is applied or carved. In most instances, 
the raised ornamentation on old furniture was 
carved from the solid wood. In modern fakes 
it is always applied; it is too costly to carve it 
‘from the solid, and then one comes to a broad 
general rule that the old manufacturers and 
carvers were much less particular about the 
quantity of wood they wasted than are the modern 


OLD FURNITURE 297 


fakers. There is a certain sense of breadth about 
their work. It is not cramped.. The maker had 
‘plenty of wood, and plenty of time, and would 
obtain a satisfactory price for his piece of furniture, 
and in consequence, he did not stint his material. 
The modern copyist does stint it, and loses that 
quality of breadth and freedom so apparent in 
the old furniture. This is particularly the case 
with carved work. The old carving was very 
freely done, and a great deal of wood was cut 
away, almost carelessly, and moreover the carving 
was irregular and eccentric ; two opposite pieces 
did not exactly balance, and there was a freedom 
about it, a life, an ease, an under-cutting that 
modern work entirely lacks. 

Where there are ornamental metal mounts, 
known as ‘‘ormolu,’”’ on, for example, a fine 
_writing-table, they must be very carefully scru- 
tinised, and as a rule it is well to have one of 
them off and look at it under the glass, because 
_ there is a granulated surface to the back of modern 
ormolu work entirely different to the surface of 
old work. Moreover, old ormolu work is actually 
ciselé, and has almost the appearance of jewellery. 
It is finely and delicately done ; the mounts by such 
artists as Gouthiére, Caffieri, and those on cabinets 
by Oeben, Riesener, or David, are works of art, 
worth careful examination, engraved with tools 
_by hand, as also are the signatures, and not pro- 
duced in moulds or stamped by any electric 


298 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


process, as are the imitations. It is really signs 
of mechanism that one has to look for in faked 
furniture—mounts turned out by mechanical 
process in large numbers, carving done by fret- 
work machines, where the edges are almost sure 
to have the effect of the machine still left upon 
them, particularly where the fret has been turned 
round at a corner, because when the turning takes 
place the fretsaw was still going, whereas the 
workman would have of course stopped using his 
saw when he turned the fretwork round. 

Questions of colour have to come in; old 
furniture fades according to the position that it 
has occupied in a room, and one has to form an 
idea from the fading whether it has been stood out 
in the sun to artificially fade it all over, or whether 
one sees where the rays of light have fallen, and 
where they have faded the wood, and, in contra- 
distinction, where the shadows have come and the 
wood has not been faded, and in the places where 
the light would not naturally reach, one has to 
look for the dark, rich depths of colour which old 
furniture should show in such positions. 

Modern gilt work can often be detected by the 
use of a little turpentine, which will quickly 
reveal whether the gilt has been recently applied. 
_Very rich and highly-figured veneers are to be 
doubted. The older furniture had much simpler 
veneers, with much less figuring upon them than 
many of the fakes possess, and veneered furniture 


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OLD FURNITURE 299 


requires to be carefully examined at its edges 
because modern veneers are very thin, and 
exceedingly level in their thickness throughout, 
whereas old veneers were thicker, and were uneven, 
thinner in some places than they were in others, 

Modern lacquer work can often be detected by 
the aid of a pin, because if it pierces the lacquer 
it is certainly new; old lacquer is of a hardness 
almost inconceivable, and becomes harder and 
harder as years go on. Modern lacquer is soft, 
badly made, and has a sort of gummy effect which 
it is not easy to explain unless one has a sample of 
it to show. ) 

Then, one has to have a knowledge of the tools 
' that were used in the eighteenth century, because 
there are many tools—chisels, gouges, etc.—used 
nowadays which the eighteenth-century joiners 
did not possess, and the marks of these modern 
tools are often perceptible, and sometimes give 
away the whole trick. 

The most difficult fakes to detect are those 
where parts, say, of a set of chairs have been 
used throughout the new set—a leg here, an arm 
there, part of a back somewhere else—and where 
the faker announces that there have been repairs, 
whereas, as a matter of fact, he has cut up two or 
three old chairs and distributed the material 
through the new set so as to entrap the unwary. 
Here the penknife and the glass come in handy, 
because the new wood (often of two kinds) can 


300 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


generally be detected, and the new carving never 
exactly copies the old. It is tighter and harder, 
and done with less freedom, and, moreover, the 
colour is too even throughout the whole of the 
furniture. The faker also has generally forgotten 
the effects of sunlight in a room where chairs are 
constantly being moved about, sometimes in the 
dark corners and sometimes in front of a window. 

Worm marks are very cleverly copied, but as a 
rule modern worm marks have no dust at the 
bottom of them, or if they have the dust is fresh 
and bright in colour, and the use of a pin on which 
a touch of gum has been put will sometimes bring 
up, from what appears to be an old worm mark, 
some powder of quite a different colour to the 
wood, showing that the worm mark is quite recent. 

In furniture with handles, changes of fashion 
have made changes of handles. Old pieces very 
often show that underneath the drop handle the 
wood has been filled up with a peg, where at one 
time was a knob. The forger does not bother 
about this. He makes his piece of furniture and 
fastens on its handle. He forgets that seventy 
years ago the handles were taken off and knobs 
were put instead, owing to fashion, and then the 
knobs were taken away again and handles put 
back again. 

In old marqueterie clock-cases it is important 
to notice that the marqueterie work was always 
irregular, the two sides often did not balance, and 


OLD FURNITURE 301 


it was never cramped in design; the new work 
almost always is. 

In every instance, however, one has to fall back 
upon the general effect at first. Does the thing 
look right ? Is the colour right ? Is it faded in 
parts where it would naturally be faded? Are 
the details as they should be, or do you find a 
Chippendale bookcase on a Queen Anne stand, or 
a design used in old walnut furniture which was 
not introduced till the late eighteenth century ? 

Tapestry on the tops of tables must be very 
closely looked at. It has often been re-worked, 
and silks with quite modern colours used in. 
Carving and inlaying were never overcrowded on 
old furniture ; plenty of plain space was allowed. 
The fakers almost always overdo it. The legs of 
tables must be looked at, if there are castors. 
The old ones show signs of having been cut away 
to fit in old heavy castors, now often replaced by 
modern ones, and it may generally be said that no 
piece of furniture should be bought at a high price 
unless every opportunity is given for looking at it 
underneath and examining it minutely. 

There was a maker of Flanders jugs who knew 
that if a jug full of water was frequently set down 
an edge of the foot would become worn. He 
forgot, however, that a jug would only be set down 
on its front edge when held by its handle, and he 
wore away, in his forgery, the back edge, where 
the jug could not possibly be set down, just below 


302 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


the handle. The furniture forger very often 
makes very much the same mistake. 

Let me strongly recommend a recent book on 
“Walnut Furniture,’ by R. W. Symons. Every 
collector of old furniture should possess it, and 
also Mr. Herbert Cescinsky’s three volumes on 
English eighteenth-century furniture, and his 
important volume on clocks. 


CHAPTER XLII 


CAKES AND ALE 


ATING and drinking occupy a considerable 
amount of special concern, especially at 
Christmas-time, and it might interest 

some persons, especially younger members of the 
family, if the question of collecting, or at least 
bringing together, with various articles of food 
received some attention with local connections. 
There would be geographical interest; in some 
cases an interest connected with folk-lore; and 
often there are scraps of local history that account 
for the fact that we give to certain foods the names 
of certain places. 

_ For example, Durham mustard is an accepted 
title in grocers’ lists, because of the fact that in 
Durham mustard was first of all prepared; but 
I am inclined to think that there is no mustard 
made in Durham now, but practically it all comes 
from either Colman’s or Keen’s. 

There are numberless cakes, however, that are 
always identified with their place of origin, and 
our tea-table could be well spread. There are 
the ‘‘ Maids of Honour” coming from _ Rich- 
mond, Eccles cakes, Shrewsbury cakes, Grantham 

303 


304 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


biscuits, Banbury cakes, Dundee cake, Guildford 
manchets, Bath buns, Bristol gingerbread, Notting- 
ham buns, Bath Olivers, Scotch bun and Scotch 
shortbread, and probably there are many more. 

The Bath Oliver is always said to have had its 
origin when Bath was a place to which the fashion- 
able world went, and something in the way of a 
biscuit was desired to eat after the draught of 
unpleasant water had been swallowed. Hence it 
is said that Dr. Oliver invented this delightful 
biscuit, which is still made, I believe, from his 
original receipt, and can only be obtained from 
his legitimate successors. 

Supposing, for example, the meals for a whole 
day were planned on lines of something of this 
sort, and that we started at breakfast time with 
Cambridge sausages, obtained perhaps at Harrod’s 
and having no connection with the University 
city; but just remembering that sausages are 
constantly a favourite Sunday morning meal, 
because when they were first made near to Cam- 
bridge they were brought into the city for 
Saturday’s market and purchased for Sunday 
morning. In lieu of these we might, perhaps, 
purchase in London Bologna sausages (hence 
our word Polonies) or German sausage, and could 
feel sure that neither of them had even a remote 
connection with the places with which they were 
first associated. 

We should very likely have on the table Vienna 


CAKES AND ALE 305 


bread and French rolls. We might have a Melton 
Mowbray pie, that very probably would have 
come from the place where they were first made 
and where there are still a large number of manu- 
facturers of them. We would have some 
Yarmouth bloaters that probably came from 
Yarmouth, and perhaps a slice from a Bath chap, 
finishing up with a little Dundee marmalade. 
Then, when we came to the midday meal or 
evening dinner, we could have Canterbury lamb 
or Ostend rabbit, Dover sole or Greenwich white- 
bait; and amongst our vegetables we might 
have Brussels sprouts and Jerusalem artichokes— 
the last absolutely misnamed, the word simply 
being a corruption of an Italian word which refers 
to the plant turning round towards the sun; 
there might also be Spanish onions over which we 
would put a little Cayenne pepper, although 
possibly none of our Cayenne pepper comes from 
the place from whence it was first of all intro- 
duced, but from some other place in South 
America; and we could have Irish stew and 
Yorkshire pudding (both made in London), or a 
Norfolk dumpling, and a little later on, a Welsh 
rarebit, which has had no connection with Wales ; 
and then various kinds of cheeses, such as Dutch 
cheese, or Stilton cheese (which has nothing to do 
with Stilton, but used to be sold in Stilton market 
by the farmers who lived in the neighbouring 


towns), or we could have Colwich cheese, or a 
U 


306 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


Bakewell pudding ; and then, perhaps, as a sweet, 
a Norfolk biffin, an apple delicacy hardly known 
out of that county. 

For our dessert there are Brazil nuts, which we 
do still import from Brazil, Jordan almonds, 
which certainly have nothing to do with the River 
Jordan now, whatever they may have done in the 
past, Carlsbad plums and Smyrna figs, and either 
Tunis or Tafilat dates, with Blenheim Oranges, 
which were certainly first grown at Blenheim, but 
I am told there are no apple-trees left of the 
-particular class in the place now. 

A tea-party has already been referred to, but 
there are many other Scottish buns or scones that 
come from the Land o’ Cakes that could be added 
to our Jist, notably the Pitkeathly bannocks, a | 
kind of shortbread baked in thick cakes in which 
pieces of orange peel and almonds are put, and 
which certainly originated in the little village in 
Perthshire which has a reputation for a mineral 
spring. Then we could add those cubical chunks 
of plain gingerbread or treacle cake, which are 
still called Chester cakes; and there could be 
Parleys, or Parliament cakes, a kind of ginger- 
bread or ginger biscuit‘baked in long rectangles 
with scolloped edges, and of which children have 
always been very fond. There is Somerset apple 
cake, there are the saffron cakes of curious yellow- 
ish colour baked at Saffron Walden, and there are 
all kinds of odd Cornish cakes, many of them 


CAKES AND ALE 307 


also yellow from the use of saffron, and there is 
Swiss roll and that delightful rich gingerbread 
known as Yorkshire parkin, while, if we were 
having tea in Cornwall, there is almost sure to be 
on the table some kind of pasty, because it is said 
that Cornish people put anything and everything 
into a pasty, and the legend runs that the Devil 
himself dare not cross the boundary into that 
county, lest they put him in too! 

On the tea-table we could also have Mocha 
coffee, which very likely came from Brazil, and 
China tea which quite probably was grown in 
Ceylon. Our Demerara sugar very likely came 
from Jamaica, and the oranges may be called 
St. Michael and have come from the Canaries, and 
the raisins Malaga and have come from Greece. 

Children would delight in Everton toffee or 
Harrogate toffee, and then there is Edinburgh 
rock, and the big pink and white rock that one 
finds on sale in every seaside place, and which, in 
Southend is called Southend rock, and in Brighton, 
Brighton rock—in each case, as a rule, having 
the name of the place introduced into the appear- 
ance of the sweetmeat itself. 

One of the oldest sweetmeats in England is that 
known as a Pomfret cake, first made and still 
prepared at Pontefract from the locally grown 
liquorice plant—a large-sized black lozenge, well 
known to all children in that particular district. 
Other children would very likely have what they 


308 EVERYBODY'S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


would call Spanish liquorice, which originally was 
introduced from Spain but now almost always 
comes from Italy ; and they might have various 
dishes made of Indian corn, grown in the States, 
certainly adding to their pleasures that of a box 
of Turkish delight, which they would very likely 
get from Selfridge’s and which would have been 
made on their premises. . 

As for drinks, there would be an almost un- 
limited choice; but, if we only wanted those 
which were produced in the place, the name of 
which they bear, we could have Burton ale or 
Dublin stout, Devonshire cider or Plymouth gin. 

It would surely be an interesting subject for 
investigation, the origin of many of these local 
foods. Probably some sort of ecclesiastical origin 
is concerned in some of the cakes—for example, 
the Cloth-workers’ Company in London still give 
away, at their Corpus Christi feast, a large spiced 
sponge-cake, known as the Corpus Christi cake, 
which is made from some special and favourite 
recipe, and which is mentioned far away back 
in English history, and, in fact, I think Pepys 
alludes to obtaining this particular cake at Cloth- 
workers’ Hall. Chaucer alludes to the manchet. 
Whether he means what is now called in Surrey 
the “ lardy roll’ is another matter, but the whole 
subject is of interest, and, in many instances, the 
more or less remote origin is important from a 
folk-lore point of view. | 


CAKES AND ALE 309 


We use very many words now that have lost 
their meaning. Our meal would very likely be 
served in a room covered with a Brussels or 
Kidderminster carpet, neither of them having any 
connection whatever with the place the name of 
which they bear, and it is, moreover, very doubtful 
whether any carpet was ever woven at all at 
Brussels. Perchance, however, there might be a 
Turkey carpet on this floor, and that might have 
been made in Asia Minor or Anatolia, and the 
chairs covered with Morocco leather that has 
never had any connection whatever with the 
Moors, but has been prepared in London. 

The blinds of the windows are very possibly 
called Venetian, the Oxford grate was perhaps 
made in Birmingham, and the so-called Dutch 
tiles made in the Potteries, while some of the 
chairs may be called Windsor and have come 
from High Wycombe; the table may be polished » 
with French polish in London and blocked with 
Norway pine from Scotland, while perhaps the 
curtains of the room will be of Lyons silk and the 
chairs covered with Genoa velvet, both substances 
woven at Braintree; and on the table may be 
Irish linen made in Cumberland, Venetian glass 
blown at Stourbridge, and the delightful dish of 
Devonshire cream perhaps came up from Cornwall. 

Still, there are the words and the names, telling 
us a good deal if we chose to investigate them, 
concerning history and origin, and though the 


310 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


original meanings may have perhaps passed away, 
the story of these words is worth investigating, 
and there is plenty of interest to be gathered from 
doing so. We know that our German silver did 
not come from Germany, we are pretty sure that 
the Sheffield cutlery had nothing to do with 
Sheffield, but in words like these are embodied 
little bits of history, and investigation yields 
many an interesting result. 


CHAPTER XLIII 
BATTERSEA AND BILSTON ENAMELS 


OME day or other, when Mr. Ward Usher’s 
treasures are arranged in the Municipal 
Museum he has founded in Lincoln, there 

will be an opportunity of looking at some of the 
most beautiful bits of Battersea enamel that have 
~ ever been collected. 

I was with him when he bought many of his 
pieces, and I advised him about several of 
them. We had a dispute once about a piece 
which he said was Battersea, and which I said 
was French. It was a long needle-case, and, after 
he had bought it, he dug away at the very bottom 
with a knitting-needle, and, to his supreme disgust, 
discovered a little French label, and forthwith 
sent the needle-case back again to the dealer, who 
had guaranteed it Battersea. Two of his finest 
pieces are the pink mustard-pots that he bought 
in zgoo from Mr. Dudley Macdonald. Very 
precious, and one of the most interesting, is a 
little thimble-case that belonged to Charlotte 
Bronté that he bought at a sale of Bronté relics, 
and which he always thought he would give to 
the museum at Haworth, but he could never quite 


311 


312 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


persuade himself to part from his delightful little 
blue treasure decorated with its charming sprigs 
of roses. 

My own grandmother used to carry in her 
pocket a little nutmeg box.of Battersea enamel, 
with a tiny grater just inside the lid. I believe 
she only carried it because her mother did so, for 
in her time nutmegs had gone down in price and 
were not so precious as they were before. People 
used to dust their muffins with a tiny particle of 
nutmeg, and hence the tiny boxes and the tiny 
salt cellars that succeeded them were called 
mutfineers. 

The manufacture of these charming little 
enamels was started in about 1750, at York House, 
Battersea, and the owner of the works was Mr. 

Janssen, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1754, 
and afterwards Sir Stephen Janssen. 

Horace Walpole gives us the date in his letter 
to his friend Richard Bentley, dated September 
18th, 1755. He says, ‘I shall send you a trifling 
snufi-box, only as a sample of the new manufacture 
at Battersea, which is done with copper plates.”’ 
The snuff-boxes are rare. There were probably 
not very many of them made, because they were 
costly to produce, and the decoration upon them, 
which was done from copperplate engravings by 
means of transfer to the surface of the enamel, 
required extreme skill. What are generally to be 
found are the tiny patch-boxes, usually with little 


BATTERSEA AND BILSTON ENAMELS 313 


steel mirrors inside the lids, often plain in colour, 
delightful rose-pink, blue and green, and very 
pale blue, with a spotted, so-called linen pattern 
decoration; sometimes having inscriptions on 
them, more like those of the old valentines, or the 
statement that they are “a fairing present.”’ On 
others there are portraits, and very often pretty 
little scenes, such as rural lovers, and symbolic 
figures with Cupids. Occasionally they carry 
French mottoes on them, but there was a French 
manufacture of the same sort of things at a much 
later date, and the productions of this factory are 
much smoother, more clean in the inside, rather 
too highly finished, and the enamel is laid on too 
thin. The probable reason for the French mottoes 
on the old ones was the employment of a French- 
man named Ravenet, who worked at Battersea 
for a long time. 

The largest collection I ever saw belonged to 
Mr. Kennedy, and was dispersed after his death, 
and some of his finest patch-boxes had been 
picked up for a shilling apiece in the old days when 
it was possible to buy treasures at that price. 
Lady Charlotte Schreiber, who left the great 
collection in 1884 to the South Kensington 
Museum, was even more fortunate, because she 
tells us that on one occasion, when she was buying 
some rather choice things, she had her handbag 
filled with some odds and ends of Battersea 
enamel, which the man saw she admired, but which 


314 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


he regarded as quite trumpery, and unworthy of 
any notice at all. 

The prettiest things ever made in Battersea 
were the étuis, dainty little boxes with chased 
gilt metal mounts, and sometimes containing all 
the original implements for which they were made. 
Mr. Usher had a beauty, which had all its 
implements, and a needlecase which possessed its 
_ old needles. He also possessed the Nelson box 
dated 1805, with a trophy of arms. Probably a 
great many such boxes were made at the time, 
but very few have survived. 

In 1900 there was a great run on Battersea 
enamel and immediately the faker set to work in 
Brussels and Paris. On one occasion I saw quite 
a large collection of so-called Battersea enamels, 
purchased by a Frenchman, in which I do not 
believe there were two specimens that had ever 
come from Battersea at all. 

The rarest things to get are the candlesticks and 
the writing desks and inkstands. Some of the tops 
made for canes will open, so that strong scent can 
be put in, in case that the physician who carried 
the cane was visiting a patient with a dangerous 
illness. Some also of the patch-boxes have false 
lids, and on the inner one is occasionally to be 
found a picture. Sometimes these pictures are 
not very respectable, and are wisely hidden in 
the lid. Mr. Kennedy had two, which contained 
very suggestive paintings, done by Cosway, the 


“THNVNY VASYALLVG GIO JO SHIdNVXH ANIA MAA VY 


eeseacets 
Paget es 


oor gucassaeeranexts® 


fey 








BATTERSEA AND BILSTON ENAMELS 315 


miniaturist, when he first began to work as an 
artist. Occasionally the étuis were made to order. 
There are two or three at South Kensington, 
unique, intended to have been given to Mrs. 
Chambers and to Miss Day, the lady who sat to Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, and who is mentioned in Horace 
Walpole’s letters. Just a very few have the 
artist’s initials signed upon them, or names upon 
them, but these are of great rarity, unless they 
happen to be plaques, in which case there are a 
great many that are named, some taken from 
well-known engravings, and others from transfers 
specially prepared. It is said that some of these 
were painted at Liverpool, and one writer on 
enamels claims that these were actually made in 
Liverpool, but the only other place where our 
English enamel boxes were made was at Bilston, 
near Wolverhampton, and the Bilston boxes were 
smaller, rougher, not nearly so well finished, and 
occasionally have little lumps of the enamel which 
can be felt, instead of the smooth surface upon 
which Battersea prided itself. 

The manufacture of Battersea enamel was of 
very short duration. In 1756, it was all over, but 
a certain French enamel painter, named Roquet, 
is said to have carried on a manufacture of some 
of the things till a rather later date. Buyers of 
Battersea enamel must always carry a magnifying 
glass. The original productions were exquisitely 
finished, the modern ones rough and coarse. The 


316 EVERYBODY’S BOOK ON COLLECTING 


actual enamel surfaces, especially on the bigger 
pieces, such as scent bottles, cream jugs, mustard 
pots, and particularly on buttons, is smooth and 
delicate and dainty. On the forgeries made in 
France, it is not nearly so smooth ; it is laid on to 
the copper exceedingly thinly, it is poor in texture, 
and it is often rough and sand-like in quality. 


INDEX 


A 


“Abolition of Slavery, the,” 
very rare Baxter print, go. 

Amber, 195-201. 

Apsley-Pellatt Glass Works, 
the, 252,253. 

Ashburnham, Lord, his iron- 
works the last in Sussex, 
162. 

Ashmolean Museum, the, 208. 

Autographs of Famous People, 
140-148. 

Avery, Sir William, his collec- 
tion of postage stamps, 53. 


B 


Baldock, Mr., dealer in Sévres 
china, 37. 

** Baldock Sévres,’’ 37. 

Barberini Vase, the, 133. 

Barbizon School, the, 13. 

Bartolozzi, pupil of Ryland, 


174. 

Bates, author of “‘ Old English 
Glass,’’ 30. 

Bath Oliver biscuits, 304. 

Battersea enamel, 311-316. 

Batty, author of standard book 
on Traders’ Tokens, 186. 

Baxter, inventor of oil process 
of making colour prints, 
87, 88, I19-126. 

Baxter prints, 85-93. 

Baxterotypes, 91. 

Beckett, mezzotinter, 62. 

Bedingfeld, Sir Henry, 26. 

Bells, 230-236. 

Bemrose, author of book on 
china, 25. 


347 


Bennett collection of porcelain, 


the, 154. 

Bentley, partner to Josiah 
Wedgwood, 129. 

Bentley, Richard, friend of 


Horace Walpole, 312. 
Bernard, Jean, Secretary to 
Countess Héléne de 
Hangest, 77. 
Bewick, wood engraver, 33. 
Bilston enamels, 315. 
Blooteling, Abraham, mezzo- 
tinter, 62, 64. 
Bolsover, first manufacturer of 
Sheffield plate, 285. 
Bonbonniéres, 237-241. 
Bone, Henry, enameller, 206. 
Bonnaffé, Monsieur, writer of 


pamphlet on Saint 
Porchaire ware, 77. 
Bordier, Jacques, enameller, 


partner to Petitot, 203. 
Bow china, 23, 24. 
Bowles, writer on mezzotints, 


64. 

Boyne, William, author of 
book on Traders’ Tokens, 
182. 

Bracquemond, pioneer in col- 
lection of blue china, 149. 

Bradshaw, print maker, 88. 


Breguet, Louis, greatest of all 


watchmakers, 212-215... 
Brighton Museum, the, 23, 200. 
British Museum, the : 

Chelsea figures and groups 

in, 24. 

Cheylesmore collection of 

mezzotints in, 62. 

ginger jar in, 151. 
Britwell sale, the, 15, 16. 


318 


Bronté, Charlotte, thimble case 
of, 311. 

Brooks, print maker, go. 
Brown, Mrs. Johnson, collector 
of Sheffield plate, 292. 
Burlington Fine Arts Club, 

exhibition of Egyptian 

- antiquities at, 103, 107. 
Burton, Mr. Harry, his photos 
of Egyptian antiquities, 


103. 

Bushell, Dr., author of book on 
blue and white porcelain, 
151-153. 


C 


Carnarvon, late Earl of, 102, 
107, 109. 
Carter, Mr. Howard, 102. 
Carysfort, late Lord, 42. 
Cater, Mr., of Colchester, col- 
lector of old glass, 27. 
Catherine II, Empress. of 
Russia : 
collection of mezzotints of, 
60, 64. 
Wedgwood service of, 128. 
Cescinsky, Herbert, author of 
work on English eighteenth 
century furniture, also on 
clocks, 302. 
Chaffers, Mr., 
faience, 81. 
standard work on Lowestoft 
ware of, 243, 247. 
Chalmers sale, the, 16. 
Chelsea china figures, 22-25. 
Chelsea-Derby figures, 24. 
Cherpentier, potter, 76. 
Chester hall-marks, the, 43. 
Cheylesmore collection of mez- 
zotints, the, 62. 
Christie’s, sales at, 40, 43. 
Chubb, Charles, very rare 
Baxter print portrait of, 
90. 
Chubb, Maria, very rare Baxter 
print portrait of, go. 


collector of 


INDEX 


Church, Sir Arthur, compiler of 
catalogue on porcelain, 25. 

City sceptre, the, 42. 

Clarke, Sir Purdon, 162. 

Clifford-Eskell, Mr., suggested 
certificate of posting, 72. 

Clocks, old, 278-284. 

Clothworkers’ Company, 
Corpus Christi cake given 
away by, 308. 

Coates, Sir Edward, as collector 
of colour prints, 176, 179. 

Coenen, Dutch writer on old 
glass, 30. 

Colour prints, 172-179. 

Condé, printer in colours, 173, 
175, 176. 

Cork glass, 28, 29. 

Crawford, Earl of, President of 
Philatelic Society, 57. 


Crisp, Frederick, author of 
book on Lowestoft ware, 
244-246. 

D 


Dawe, mezzotinter, 62. 

Day, Sir John, 13. 

Decanter labels, 216-223. 

Deeds, old, 155-160. 

Delessert, Monsieur, collector 
of faience, 83. 

Dent, modern watchmaker, 
215. 

Diaz-Mauve, artist, 13. 

Dickens, Charles, varying 
signatures of, 146. ; 

Dickenson, mezzotinter, 64. 

Dinanderie, 134-139. 

Dixon, mezzotinter, 62. 

Doo, engraver, 34. 

Door-porters, 251-253. 

Dublin Museum, the, 231. 

Duesbury, bought up Chelsea 
and Bow china works, 23. 

Diirer, wood engraver, 33, 34. 

Duveen, Henry, 17, 54. 

D’ Yvon, Madame, collection of, 
81, 


INDEX 


E 


East, Edward : 
maker of watches, 212. 
maker of clocks, 282-284. 
Edward VI, deeds signed by, 
158. 
Edward VII, his distaste for 
sherry, 99. 
Egyptian antiquities, 102-109. 
Eliason, Daniel, purchaser of 
Hope Blue Diamond, 111, 
ieaak a 
Elizabeth, Queen, signature of, 
146, 156, 158. 
Enamel portraits, 202-208. 
Estienne, Charles, 78. 
Exeter Hall silver mark, 41. 


F 


Faber, mezzotinter, 62. 
Faience pottery, 76~84. 
Falk, Bernard, dedication, 5. 


Ferrari, stamp collection of, 
53, 54, 57- 

Field, Mr. George, collector of 
faience, 81. 

Fillon, Monsieur, his theory 
upon Henri II faience, 
76, 77 


Flaxman, one of Josiah Wedg- 
wood’s helpers, 129, 130. 
Fountaine collection, the, 79. 
Frick, Henry Clay, American 
collector, 19, 20. 
Fruit-baskets, 273-277. 
Furniture, old, hints for pur- 
chasers of, 293-302. 


G 


Galitzin, Prince, 82. 

Garland collection of porcelain, 
the, 153, 154. 

Gary, Judge, collector of 
china, 154. 

George V, an enthusiastic col- 
lector of postage stamps, 56. 


319 


Gibbs, Martin, collector of old 
glass, 27. 

Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., 
his knowledge of Leeds 
pottery, 20. 

Glasses, old, 26-30. 

Goat jugs, the, 22, 23. 

Gouffier, Claude, 77 

Gould, Mr., American collector, 


19. 

Granby, Lord, as collector of 
old cupboards, 262. 

Green, mezzotinter, 64. 

Green, Mr., maker of Leeds 
pottery, 273. 


H 


Haber collection of 
graphs, the, 141. 
Hamid, Abdul, as possessor of 
Hope Blue Diamond, 1173. 
Hamilton, Duke of, as collector 
of faience, 80, 8z. 
Hammond, bookseller in Marl- 
borough in 1642, 185. 
Hangest, Countess Héléne de, 


auto- 


76. 
Harington farthings, the, 181, 
8 


184. 

Hartley, Mr., Leeds pottery 
maker, 273. 

Hartshorne, Mr., 
old glass, 27. 

Heber, Richard, collector, 16. 

Henlein, said to be first watch- 
maker, 209. 

Henri II faience, 8, 36, 76-78. 


collector of 


Heralds, College of, 51. 


Heseltine, J.P., 
bronzes, 139. 

Highclere Castle collection, the, 
102, 105 

Higher nauaes mark, the, 43. 

Hobson, author of book on 
china, 25. 

Hogarth, his 
silver, 45. 

Holburne Museum at Bath, 208, 


collector of 


engraving of 


320 

Hope .Blue Diamond, the, 
history of, 110-117. 

Hope, Henry Thomas, pur- 
‘chaser of Hope’ Blue 


Diamond, III, riz. 

Hope, Lord Henry Francis, 
owner of Hope Blue 
Diamond, I12. 

Humphrey, writer on mezzo- 
tints, 64. 

Huntington, Colis P., American 
collector, 19. 

Huntington, Mrs. Colis P., 
American collector, 19, 20. 

Huntington, Archer, 20. 

Hurst, mezzotinter, 64. 

Huth collection of china, the, 
150, 151. 


Ironwork, old English, 161- 


171. 
Isham, Sir Charles, 17. 


J 


Jacobite glass, 26, 27. 

Janssen, Sir Stephen, Lord 
Mayor of London, owner 
of Battersea enamel works, 
312. 

Johnsonian collection in 
America, the, 143. 

Joicey, Mr., collector, 25. 


K 

Kauffmann, Angelica, 
174, 176. 

Kennedy, Mr., his collection of 

Battersea enamels, 313, 


artist, 


314. 
King, author of book on china, 


25. 
Knibb, Joseph, 
279-281. 
Kronheim, print maker, 88. 


clockmaker, 


INDEX 


L 


Lace bobbins, 188-194. 

Lansdowne, Marquess of, 19. 

Le Blon, painter of miniatures, 
II9 

Le Blond, print maker, 88, 90, 
II9Q—126. 

Lee collection of porcelain, the, — 


154. 

Leeds pottery, 20, 21, 132, 258, 
273-277- 

Letter weights, 248-253. 

Leverhulme, Lord, 154. 

Leverhulme Museum, the, 133, 


154. 

Lewis, Courtney, writer of 
manual on Baxter, 88, 89, 
93, I2I-123. 


London hall-mark, 42, 43. 
London Museum, the: 
Brown collection of decanter 
labels in, 216. 
Chelsea china in, 22, 24, 25. 
Old ironwork in, 164. 
Lowestoft ware, 242-247. 
Lucas, mezzotinter, 64. 
Lustre ware, 254-258. . 
Luttrell, Narcissus, collector 
and bibliographer, 15, 16. 


M 


MacArdell, James, mézzotinter, 
62, 64. 

Macdonald, Dudley, collector 
of Battersea enamel, 311. 

MacGregor collection, the, 105. 

McLean, Edward B., _ pur- 
chaser of Hope Blue 
Diamond, 114-116. 

McLean, Mrs., 114-116. 

McLean, Vincent, 114-116. 

Magniac collection, the, 80. 

Marchi, mezzotinter, 62. 

Maris, artist, 13. 

Marks, Murray, dealer_in blue 
china, 149-151. 

** Marmaduke,” writer, 26. 


INDEX 


Marston-Perry collection of 
porcelain, the, 153. 

Maximilian, bronze tomb of, in 
Innsbruck, 134. 

Mayer collection, the, 128. 
Mears, firm of bell-founders, 
233. 
Mendelssohn, 
144. 

Meryon, etcher, 35. 
Metropolitan Museum of New 
York, the, 154. 
Mezzotints, 59-65. 
Mi Regent diamond, the, 117. 
Mockler, Mr., started Baxter 
Society, 88, 92. 
Morgan, Pierpont : 
antagonist of H. C. Frick, 20. 
buys Sévres vase to complete 
pair, 14. 
catalogues of, 17, 95. 
collection of blue and white 
porcelain, his, 153, 154. 


autographs of, 


purchases Red Hawthorn 
vase, 17. 
Myers, print maker, 88. 


N 


Napoleon fII: 
letters of, 144. 
picture of, 18. 

Narford Hall, 79. 

Nelson, lLord, letters 
despatches of, 143. 

Nettlefold & Chamberlain, 
screwmakers, 295. 

Nevill, Lady Dorothy, as col- 
lector of ironwork, 161- 
163. 

New College, Oxford, as owners 
of earliest piece of Oriental 
porcelain, 153. 

New South Wales stamps, rare, 


and 


2; 

Newall, William, collector of 
bronzes, 135. 

Newman, Cardinal, letter from, 
144. 
xX 


321 


Norman Cross, near Stilton, 
prison for 6,000 French- 
men, 224, 227-229. 

Northcliffe, late. Viscount, 
dedication, 5. 

Northumberland, Algernon, 
4th Duke of, collector 
of Egyptian antiquities, 
Io2. 


O 


Oak chests, 259-264. 

Odiot, Monsieur, goldsmith and 
collector, 8o. 

Oiron. ware, 77, 78. 

Oxburgh Hall, 26. 


P 


Peckitt of York, stained glass 
maker, 48. 
Pembroke, Anne Countess of, 
168, 169. 
Pepys, Samuel : 
obtains cake at Clothworkers’ 
Hall, 308. 
signatures of, 140. 
Pether, mezzotinter, 62. 
Petitot, greatest of enamellers, 
203, 204, 207. 
Philbrick, F. A., leader of 
British stamp collectors, 57. 
Place, mezzotinter, 62. 
Pomfret cakes, 307. 


Porcelain, blue and _ white, 
149-154. 
Porte, Jean de la, French 


prisoner and maker of 
marqueterie picture of 
Peterborough Cathedral, 
225. 
Portland vase, the, 133. 
Postage stamps, rare, 52-58. 
Post-cards, 66-75. 
Pratt, Mr., American collector, 


IQ. 
Prints, old, 31-35. 
Purcell, mezzotinter, 62. 


be 


Q 


Quare, clock-maker, 279-282. 


R 


Ravenet, employed at Batter- 
sea enamel works, 313. 
Red Hawthorn vase, the, 17, 18. 

Rembrandt, as etcher, 35. 

Robinson, mezzotinter, 64. 

Roquet, manufacturer of 
enamels, 315. 

Rosenbach, Dr., 
lector, 16, 17. 

Rosenberg, silversmith of 
eighteenth century, 41. 

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, collects 
blue china, 149. 

Rothschild, Baron Alphonse de, 
80. 

Rothschild, Baron Ferdinand 
de as owner of famous 
silver bell, 232. 

Rothschild, Baron Gustave de, 
80. 

Rothschild, Baron James de, 80. 

Rothschild, Baron Lionel de, 
80. 

- Rothschild, Sir Anthony de, 80. 

Rothschild, Mr. Alfred de, as 
owner of Sévres_ bon- 
bonniére, 237. 

Roubillac, sculptor, 25. 

Rupert, Prince, as mezzotinter, 
61. 

Russia, late Emperor of, his 
collection of mezzotints, 
59, 60, and faience, 82. 

Ryland, W. W., introduced 
colour printing into 
England, 174. 

Rylands collection, the, 33. 


S 


St. Paul’s Cathedral, railings of 
Sussex ironwork, 162. 
Saint Porchaire ware, 77-79. 


book col- 


INDEX 


St. Sebald, bronze shrine of, in 
Nuremberg, 134. 

Salting, Mr. George, 17, 18, 25, 
80, 84. 

Salting, Mrs., 24. 

Salting collection, the, 80, 151, 


154, 208. 
Sayers, dealer in mezzotints, 
64 


Scarabs, Egyptian, 105, 106. 

Schongauer, line engraver, 34. 

Schreiber, Lady Charlotte, 
leaves collection to South 
Kensington Museum, 313. 

Seago, Mr., collector of Lowe- 
stoft ware, 244, 246. 

Seals and sealing-wax, 265— 
272. 
Sévres porcelain, 8, 36—40. 
Sheffield plate, 285-292. 
Sherborn, engraver, 34. 
Sherwin, mezzotinter, 61. 
Short, Sir Frank, mezzotinter, 
64. 

Siegen, Ludwig van, first mez- 
zotinter, 61. 

Silver, old, 41-45. 

Smith, M. T., collection, the, 
81. 

Smith, Nathaniel, & Co., makers 
of Sheffield plate, 288. 

Sotheby’s, 16, 26. 

South Kensington Museum : 
Battersea enamels at, 315. 
blue and white china in, 154. 
Jones collection of enamels 


in, 207. 

Saint Porchaire ware in, 
79-82, 84. 

Schreiber collection left to, 
ats: 


Spencer, enameller, 205. 

Spero, Alfred, bronze expert, 
139. 

Spitzer collection, the, 80, 136. 

Sprimont, manager of Chelsea 
china works, 23. 

Stained and painted glass, 


46-51. 


INDEX 


Staniforth collection of spoons, 
the, 42. 

Stannas, Mrs., author of ‘‘ Old 
Irish Glass,”’ 30. 

Stein, Monsieur, collector, 84. 

Stephan, Heinrich von, intro- 
duced post-cards, 66, 67, 
69, 74, 75- 

Straw marqueterie, 224-229. 

Swaythling, Lord, his collection 
of old silver, 44. 


Symons, R. W., author of 

“ Walnut Furniture,”’ 302. 
Tt 

Tavernier, Jean Baptiste, 
owner of Hope Blue 
Diamond, IIo, III. 

Taylor, John Edward, col- 
lector of bronzes, 135-137. 

Thompson, Mr. Yates, col- 
lector, 13. 


Thouars, Castle of, 77. 

Thurn and Taxis, Counts of, 74. 

Tompion, great English watch- 
maker and clockmaker, 
Bio ere, 279, 282. 

Traders’ tokens, 180-187. 

Tweedmouth, the late Lord, as 


collector of Wedgwood 
ware, 132. 
U 
Usher, Ward, founder of 
Municipal Museum in 
Lincoln, 311, 314. 
V 


Valentine, mezzotinter, 64. 

Veitch, Mr., author of leading 
work on Sheffield plate, 286. 

Victoria, Queen, Baxter prints 
of, 86, 89. 

Victoria and Albert Museum, 
the, 26, 162. 

Vosterman, line engraver, 34. 


323 
W 


Wales, Edward Prince of, as 
stamp collector, 57. 

Walker, Dr., author of book on 
Norman Cross, 228. 

Walpole, Horace, 312. 

Walters, W. T., collector of 
porcelain, 153. 

Ward, printer in colours, 175, 
$76; 

Watches, 209-215. 

Waterford glass, 28, 29. 

Watts, mezzotinter, 62. 

Wedgwood, Josiah, the potter, 
127-130, 256, 257. 

Wedgwood ware, 20, 127-133, 
256, 257, 266. 

Weekly Dispatch, the, 7. 

Westropp, Mr. Dudley, author 
of book on old glass, 29, 


30. 
Whistler, J.: 
collects blue china, 149, 152. 
etches, 35. 
White, mezzotinter, 62, 64. 
Widener, Mr., American col- 
lector, 19. 
Willet-Holthuysen Museum in 
Amsterdam, the, 30. 
William of Wykeham crozier, 
the, 42. 
Williams, mezzotinter, 62. 
Williamson, Dr. George C. : 
acquaintance with American 
collectors, his, 19, 20. 
compiles catalogue for Pier- 
- pont Morgan, 17. 
converses with Gladstone on 
Leeds pottery, 20. 
examines Hope Blue Dia- 
mond, IIo. 
fails to persuade old lady to 
sell rare New South Wales 
stamps, 52, 53- 
first introduction to Sévres 
china, his, 38-40. 
re-discovers Catherine II’s 
Wedgwood service, 129. 


PUY ia ‘INDEX 


Williamson, Dr. George C.: 
—continued 
sees goat jugs, 22, 23. 
tests amber, 195, 196. 
valuable colour prints pre- 
| sented to, 173, 174. 
Wilmer, author of “ Early 
English Glass,”’ 30. 
Winchester election cup, the, 


44. 

Wine, old, 94-101. 

Wolseley, Viscountess, as col- 
lector of Sheffield plate, 
292. 






Wright, Mr.) author sta 
book on lace bobbin 
I90. 


Yohe, May, 112. sch 
Yoxall, author of # Collec 
Old Glass,” I te 


2 


Zincke, Swedish” enamelle _ 
204, 205. 


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